


High Rise

by Slater_Babe



Category: Triple Frontier (2019)
Genre: 80s AU, A little period typical sexism, Businesswoman Reader, Eventual Smut, F/M, Falling In Love, First Meetings, Fluff, Frankie also has a daughter btw, Frottage, Getting Together, Hotel Owner Reader, Insecurities, Mentions of the Vietname war, Nicknames, Office Sex, PIV Sex, Pining, Probably some masturbation, Repairman Frankie Morales, Retro AU, Sweetheart Frankie Morales, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, coworkers (sort of), lots of yearning, meet cute, no beta we die like men, pussy eating, very slight angst, wealth gap, work relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:01:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 41,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29357667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slater_Babe/pseuds/Slater_Babe
Summary: The first time Frankie saw you was on a sunny, summer day.Changes in ownership were never good,Frankie reminds himself,get shuffled around too much and suddenly you're back working at McDonalds, wishing your boss hadn't drawn the short end of the stick on you behalf.But alas, glamor and money were the spirit of the Chapman, the essence of LA itself. After living in the city for so long, he's tired of the frills and facade. But this time around, he can't find it in himself to despise it when glamor and money look likethat.-----Or, alternatively, the 80s hotel AU where you're the new owner of a luxury hotel brand, and Frankie's a repairman that's lived in the shadows for far too long.
Relationships: Francisco "Catfish" Morales/Original Female Character(s), Francisco "Catfish" Morales/Reader, Francisco "Catfish" Morales/You
Comments: 14
Kudos: 51





	1. Prologue: Un Ángel en LA

**Author's Note:**

> Hello~~ I've been on a roll recently, so have some more Frankie fluff!! I originally posted this on my tumblr (linked below), but I for some reason didn't want to bring it over here for a minute?? Either way, it's here now, and I hope you all will come along for the ride~~ I love the 80s sort of aesthetic stuff, so I made this an 80s AU for no reason. This'll probably have 5-6 chapters, about 5k each, and a few oneshots afterwards that will be seperate works~~ I hope you all like this uwu
> 
> btw, this is just a prologue as of now, so it's a lil bit shorter than the next chapter 
> 
> My Tumblr: [slater-baby](https://slater-baby.tumblr.com)

The first time Frankie saw you was on a sunny, summer day. 

He remembers it, not because there was anything particularly special about that day, but because of how nice he felt when he woke up that morning (which, now that he thinks about it, might have made it a special day in its own right). He’d slung his jumpsuit over his shoulder and mashed his ball cap onto his head, lugged his tool box into the bay of his truck, and promptly cranked the radio to an almost blistering degree.

The sun had been sweltering then, furiously filling his vision even with the sunglasses that periodically dipped low on his nose. Getting to The Chapman was always a pain this time of morning, especially during the summer months. With the personality and nightlife of LA practically living vicariously through the summer air itself, the streets were flooded with rosy-eyed college kids, drinking in and drowning under the superficial glamour of just existing in this part of town. 

He’d lived here long enough not to find the appeal anymore, but as long as they were happy, there was no reason to spoil the fun. He could see the hotel on the skyline, windows sparkling in the rising sun. Working there wasn’t what’d he’d planned after leaving the military, but fixing appliances for a company as lavish as Chapman was an honor in and of itself...even if anyone hardly paid him mind or enough money to get by comfortably.

The Chapman was a string of hotels across the US and Europe, gold-tinted and overflowing with all the luxuries one never knew they needed, should they fork out the absolutely appalling amount needed to book a reservation. LA was the height of it all, and in the splendor of the 80s, the hotel just seemed like the quintessential peak of glamour and glitz that seeped through every corner of the Sunshine City. Five star restaurants with world-renowned chefs; poolside bars with nightly entertainment; a casino in the East wing; a jacuzzi on nearly every balcony; private beachside access.

The Chapman had it all.

Unless you weren’t a guest.

And then it was pretty dingy. But Frankie didn’t mind. Let alone on a day like this, when the sky was practically begging the world to smile at it.

As he walked towards the employee entrance off the side of the valet’s station, he waved down at the new hires in their pristine velvet waistcoats, fresh-faced and barely 18 years old. He passed the garden that morning, too, which was in full bloom this time of year. He tipped his hat at Mr. Kurokawa, the head gardener, who’d worked there since the building went up in ‘47 and would seemingly die in those flower beds before he retired.

“Morales,” Mr. Kurokawa had smiled, “How’s your girl doing? I heard she started preschool last week.”

Frankie beamed at the mention of his daughter, just 4 years old at the time, and already with too much personality to handle. She was the light of his life, and he worked tirelessly every day just to make sure he could afford those extra restaurant visits and amusement park tickets when the time came.

“She’s doing good, sir,” he answered with a smile, “Just another reason to keep busting my ass over that piping in the basement, even if Sullivans insists on having it done the old fashioned way.”

“Oh, didn’t you hear?” Mr. Kurokawa had said, and Frankie hadn’t thought much of it at the time. Just words in the air that didn’t mean anything to him. Not yet, at least, “Management says we got a new owner coming in. Apparently Sullivans sold off the company, or at least, lost enough stock for it not to mean much anymore.”

Frankie furrowed his brow, hand tightening on the handle of his toolbox. Changes in ownership were never good. Get shuffled around too much and suddenly you’re back at McDonalds, working 9-5 and wishing you’d done what you could’ve beforehand, just to not end back up there. He hummed instead of voicing his thoughts.

“Yeah…” Mr. Kurokawa continued as he dug a shallow hole for some seeds sitting at his waist, “Peterson said something about the new boss coming in soon, so I guess we’ll have that to look forward to.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Obviously, Mr. Kurokawa didn’t have much to worry about; he pretty much owned the landscape itself. They’d have to pry his cold, dead hands off the garden shed before he got kicked out. But Frankie? A repairman in janitorial services? Those were expendable, and he couldn’t afford to lose this gig without his ex-wife having something to say about it...like always.

He tipped his hat once more before moving along with a sigh. He’d fix those pipes if it killed him; hopefully this new boss wasn’t a stickler for tradition like Sullivans was.

And that’s when it happened. One moment he was watching his shoes scuff along the cigarette scented pavement, and the next his vision was dragged rightwards as a fresh breath of Parisian perfume filled his lungs.

Fruity, warm, sweet. 

The scent itself was a marker of quality, but the sight that came with it was the cherry on top. Soft skin, bouncy hair, the clack of high heels with a skin-tight skirt hugging criminally curvy legs. He tried not to stare, really he did, but it was impossible when the definition of “you wish you were” was strutting down the sidewalk.

That handbag had to cost about as much as Frankie’s yearly salary, and those sunglasses certainly weren’t bought at the local mall. Just the thought of how much this woman was worth made his mouth go dry. Lost in his stupor, however, the woman peers over her glasses at him, red lips pulled tight in a smile as she mouths a greeting. He shook himself out of his daze long enough to tug the entrance door open for her, swooning as she gave him a small “thank you” and walked gracefully past.

A high, smooth voice.

He stood dumbly as he watched her go, hips swaying with every step, drawing stares all across the lobby with the confident gait and magazine-esque appearance. In that moment, he couldn’t help but feel that women like her were Los Angeles itself. The embodiment of the sun, the sea, the surf, the sparkles, and splendor--gift-wrapped and personified in just the perfect way to have every person in the surrounding area on their knees for the beauty of it all in seconds.

 _Un ángel._

Suddenly, he was a little embarrassed of his dirty jumpsuit and unruly hair.

He really should care more about his appearance when women like that are willing to spare even a “thank you” on guys like him.

That day he watched her go, thinking things he didn’t have the right to dream of as a lone repairman in the basement of a hotel meant for people who earned his entire life’s worth in one day.

Women like her were meant for places like this, not men like him.

And that was the first time he saw you.

══════════════════

He’d been stuck in the basement for the better part of the day on those pipes when a staff meeting was called. He was really the only one with enough technical experience to work on the things (working on helicopters for most of your professional life gives you perks like that), which really makes the entire process just that much more tedious. He’s halfway through attaching a new section of PVC when his manager, a sweet woman by the name of Mrs. Velásquez, who reminds him a lot of his own mother, turns the corner of his work station.

“Mijo, ¿qué haces?” _(What are you doing, son?)_

He shocked straight at her tone, and let the PVC he’d been holding up to the limestone wall hang limply in his hands.

“Estoy trabajando, señora,” _(I’m working, Ma’am)_ he looked back at her under the brim of his cap, trying to gauge whether or not he was about to get his ass handed to him for doing absolutely nothing he wasn’t supposed to do, “¿qué pasa?” _(What’s wrong?)_

“La jefa nueva ésta aquí, mijo,” _(The new boss is here, son)_ she stressed, saying the words like this was information he should’ve known the minute he walked in the door. Thanks to Mr. K he wasn’t completely in the dark, but he wasn’t planning on getting his balls snipped this early in the day. But, more pressingly…

“La jefa?” _(the [female] boss?)_ He asked with a raise of his brow, confused.

She rolled her eyes loving and leaned against the wall, “ _Sí_ , mijo, _la_ jefa nueva.” _(Yes, son, the new [female] boss)._

He pursed his lips in contemplation, before nearly turning back to his work. However, before he could get another screw in the wall, his manager was huffing frustratedly at him, prying the PVC out of his hands to get him to turn towards her.

 _“La jefa nueva ésta aquí, mijo,” (The new boss is here, son)_ she repeated with an even tighter tone, like it’d tell him everything he needed to know just from the sound itself.

“¿Y qué?” _(And what?)_ he shrugged.

If Mrs. Velásquez had had something in her hand that wouldn’t send Frankie to the hospital, she probably would have hit him over the head with it. He fiddled with the brim of his hat as she sighed once again, pinching the bridge of her nose, like she was standing over a little boy with his hand stuck in the cookie jar.

“La jefa nueva ésta aquí, mijo, _y ella quiere conocer al personal,” (the new boss is here, son, and she wants to meet the staff)_ , his mouth opened in an ‘o’ shape with the belated realization, “¿Eres ‘personal,’ no? La reunión ya ha comenzado, mijo, llegas tarde!” _(You’re ‘staff,’ right? The meeting has already started, son, you’re late!)_

Immediately, Frankie had shoved his tools back under his belt, tool box clanking clumsily as he yanked it towards his side in his haste to follow Mrs. Velásquez back up to the main janitorial area. He used his free hand to wipe the sweat off his forehead, hoping he didn’t look as awful as he felt, praying to any god that would listen that this new boss didn’t have an issue with sweaty guys or utility grease. 

Mrs. Velásquez took him a floor up, past the repair locker rooms and janitorial closets, walking about three steps ahead of Frankie at all times, even standing a full two heads shorter than him. God, he loved the woman, but how she was able to run cardio like this at 68, he’d never know.

She led him down to her office, which was usually bustling with old Tejano music and lively conversation at this time of day, but was strangely left vacant, except for a few disjointed voices behind the heavy wooden door. Mrs. Velásquez gently pushed the door open for him, letting him clank through the tight entrance with his overflowing toolbox, much to the chagrin of the crowd of his coworkers on the other side.

And that marks the second time he saw you, mere hours apart from the first, and still looking just as unrefined as he did that morning. His face went red, and he definitely heard a few members of the congregation stifle a laugh. You looked up at the intrusion and met his eye for a brief second, stealing his composure and attention for all they’re worth. Like he deserved it, you mouthed another greeting at him, just like you had that morning, and he felt his stomach drop.

God, your perfume would follow him for days

“...know it’ll probably be an interesting time settling in…” you resumed your speech when Frankie shuffles awkwardly in at the back, “but I’m sure with the support of all the different dedicated staffs, like yourselves, everything will settle in time. Until then, I ask you all to kindly deal with me for the time being.”

Your charming, casual introduction received several adoring chuckles in response, your hair bouncing as you smile once again down at the crowd, standing tall and confident in those dangerously high heels. Honestly, you hadn't even done anything special, and Frankie was already wondering how you do it. How you can captivate any room you walk into, even without offering anything more than a ‘hello.’

Lord knows you’d had him under your spell since day 1.

You walked off the small ledge you’d been standing on, a few bold workers already reaching out to shake your hands and offer their congratulations, _sans ulterior motives,_ of course. Caught up in the rush, heart pounding and arms crossed furiously over his chest, Frankie figured that was as good a time as any to make his escape. He ducked below the brim of his hat, trying to seem as small as possible as he skipped past Mrs. Velásquez with a gruff “perdóneme.”

He left you for the basement that day, but not without catching your wandering gaze first, still encompassed by about twenty men and women fascinated by your designer watch and blood red acrylic nails.

That wouldn’t be the last time he saw you. In fact, it’s only one of the first.

══════════════════


	2. Chapter 1: Un Respiro de Aire Fresco

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After your first day at the hotel, Frankie makes a point of avoiding you at any cost. But it's impossible for any humane thing to be flawless, and that includes one Francisco Morales and his disappearing act.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> KLJDJFAKSF AHHHH OKAY SO IM SORRY I MISSED THE ORIGINAL UPDATE DAY KSDFLKAS if you didn't already know, all my updates for this series are prewritten in advance, so it's not that I hadn't written it, it's just that I completely forgot to upload it akjdflkjfdklajldf sorry about that!! I won't miss the next one~~ anyway, I hope you all enjoy this little chapter~ make sure to comment with requests or send asks on Tumblr if you want me to write something for you all!!
> 
> My Tumblr: [slater-baby](https://slater-baby.tumblr.com)

It was like everything was new. 

New energy, new light, new atmosphere--even the air itself was brimming with a novelty he hadn’t felt in his lungs since he moved down to this side of LA. The usual gold-tipped fragility of every priceless concept the company was built upon simply melted away as the hours went on, having been swapped with an unassuming strength that invisibly shook the foundations of the glamorous high rise as a new claim was staked. 

_Changes in ownership were never good,_ Frankie reminds himself daily, _get shuffled around too much, and you’ll be six feet under before you know it._

Yet the clock continues to tick, the clouds continue to lug their way across the sky, and still no imminent company purge or massive pay cut looms on the horizon. In fact, his brain reminds him somewhere deep in his subconscious, the sky has never looked clearer. 

He spends day after day in the basement, lethargically plugging up leaky pipes like always. Kurokawa manages to plant a damn near field of periwinkles off the side of the wine garden in the unobstructed stillness of the hotel. Even Mrs. Velásquez is lazy with some sort of infectious calm, frightfully underwhelmed by the lack of firing she’s had to do, and has since taken up some sort of watch at her desk (which usually consists of her flipping through old editions of Vogue magazine with a few breaks in between for snacks from the vending machine).

But then...the dreaded moment the silence breaks is inevitably upon him.

He grunts as he shoves the last piece of PVC up against the wall, finally completing the complicated monstrosity of utilities he’s been mulling over for nearly a month now. He disbelievingly looks on as the pipes creak encouragingly and don’t come crashing down the moment the water’s back on. He gives his work a small smile as he swipes the back of his hand over his forehead, shiny with perspiration.

He probably stands there like an idiot for a little too long, just watching his unsightly contraption do exactly as it was supposed to: _stay there, and not dump thirty gallons of water onto the basement floor every other minute._

But when the magic of functional utility finally eludes him, everything comes rushing back. The smell of mold thick in the atmosphere, vision green around the edges, like the bacteria from the walls and floor was stuck in the air itself. (Which, now that he thinks about it, it probably is).

He sighs and lifts his hat from his head to scratch at his scalp.

He busies himself the next few minutes with collecting his tools off the basement floor, groaning with stiffness, his back protesting every movement. Whistling idly, he climbs the stairs back to the main janitorial wing, giving Mrs. Velásquez a mock salute when she looks up at his arrival. He shoves his toolbox back into his designated locker, glancing with a smile at the picture of his daughter he’d hung on the backside of his locker door the day he was hired. 

It’s only when he’s standing under the spray of the dingy employee shower stall that it hits him. 

Now that the pipes are fixed… _what’s there to do?_ Does he go back to working in the actual hotel itself? Changing light bulbs? Fixing air conditioners and door knobs?

Does he go back to the proverbial light after spending nearly a month in the basement? The place was practically his home at this point; he hasn’t spent a single company hour above ground since July. And with it...he hasn’t spent a second acknowledging the changes that have happened since he chained himself to that piping at Sullivans’ request. 

He also hasn’t spent a single second acknowledging _you._

He sighs, willingly letting a few bubbles of soap drop in his eyes as punishment.

It’s stupid. It’s so _unbelievably, overwhelmingly_ stupid that he’s only seen you twice, and he’s already nursing a stinging headache over how much you’ve come to his mind the past week. It's like he can’t even look at the name of the hotel itself without having your smile flash behind his eyes, peering at him over a heavy set of Ray-bans perched delicately on your nose.

He rinses the soap from his hair, trying to justify how many times he’s replayed your (nonexistent) interactions from that day, as if he could be forgiven for even thinking of someone so obviously untouchable. 

He’s weak with guilt, scowling down at the rusty drain of a shower on the ground floor of janitorial services, while you’re probably drinking champagne and talking shop over cash flow statements on the fifty-first floor. 

The comparisons just draw themselves. 

He shuts the water off with a shake of his head, half-trying to shed the extra water droplets and half-trying to expel whatever his current train of thought is. As he redresses in front of the mirror, trying valiantly to keep his curls from puffing up under his cap with the frizzy way they’ve dried, he struggles to accept his fate.

He’s officially left the basement, and with it, comes the dreaded act of actually showing his face to the working world, to the daylight and noisy bustle that comes with hotel work. And, subsequently, to the quiet enigma that is you, the new boss that’s defied everyone’s dreaded expectations.

For the first time in a long time, he feels like quitting his job.

He locks eyes with himself in the mirror, trying to envision how straight he used to stand when he wore his dress uniforms at formal events, or how tall he used to look standing guard at base during the night.

However, eventually, he just comes to the quiet consensus that’d he’d rather be a shivering coward than face the consequences your elegance will inevitably have on his mind the moment he starts working like normal again.

Another sigh.

Guess he’ll just avoid you until you forget he exists (if you ever knew he existed in the first place). Yep, that sounds good.

He gives himself a nod in the mirror, and slings his jumpsuit back over his shoulder to head home for the day.

══════════════════

As much as you wouldn’t think it would be an issue, the amount of time you spend off the conference floor is quickly becoming a problem for Frankie’s entire operation. He’s used to the bosses sequestering themselves on the penthouse floor, surrounding themselves with pomp and circumstance when all that awaits them on the lower floors is the pitiful sight of employee expenses. Sullivans’ presence on the lower twenty floors was almost nonexistent; the only way you could tell he was still running the place was the weekly fax notices, bitching about this or that, hence the tedious pipe work and month long isolation.

What Frankie means by that is, if it’s not flaked with gold or covered in dollar signs, there was no reason for a boss to pay it any mind.

But you just love to defy expectations, don’t you?

Or at least it seems like that. When Frankie committed to his plan of avoiding you as best as he could, he didn’t think it’d be all hard, to be honest. He’d work as normal, change light fixtures without having to worry about anyone walking around the corner, but that just wasn’t the case. It’s like you’ve made it your personal mission to walk 10 miles around the hotel every day of the week, regardless of how uncomfortable those high heels had to be, or how terribly strange it was to see anyone with a net worth over $100,000 anywhere in these hallways.

His first day back on a regular schedule consisted of drilling some new paintings up in one of the banquet halls on the 10th floor. The things themselves are nearly as tall as himself, and about three times as expensive. 

Needless to say, it’s taking _a while._

While he fidgets with his ladder, trying to stop the wobbling in one of its legs, the dining staff is running around in a frenzy, trying to prepare the hall for some overhyped academic conference that evening. They buzz back and forth, cloth napkins and boxes of silverware stacked in their arms, when the doors of the high-ceiling entryway burst open.

When the person in the doorway is finally visible, it’s safe to say some employees literally freeze in shock at seeing the boss this far down in the building. The clack of your stilettos against the polished, wooden bar floor reverberates through the ears of every member of the upended congregation. Frankie, managing to finally recover from his initial surprise, ducks his head so low under his cap he’s sure he looks like a maniac. He steps behind his ladder just before you walk past to greet one of the wait managers.

You greet the shocked man with a genial smile, grasping one of his hands with both of your own, promptly ignoring the way he looks like a deer in the headlights at your bold approach. 

“Mr. Porter!” you enthuse, scanning the hall with a thoughtful look in your eyes as you take in the precise place setting at each seat, the name plates still being set out, before turning back to him, “Looks busy, by the state of things, am I right?”

Dazedly, Porter nods, standing straighter, like he’s just now come to terms with the fact that the most important person in the building is limply shaking his hand, “Um--yes, ma’am. The psychology department at USC is holding a conference tonight, so we’re prepping the hall.”

You hum in acknowledgement, finally releasing your grip on Porter’s hands to throw a megawatt smile at the few busboys and servers still standing around. You clasp your ring clad fingers in front of your silk blouse, perfectly coiffed hair shifting gently as you take a small stroll around the room. Frankie tries not to gape as your gaze skims over his area of the hall, each sharp _clicking_ sound resonating in his chest. 

“How wonderful!” you chuckle, twirling slightly, as if you couldn’t believe the brilliance of the pristine hall around you, the shine of the chandelier glinting off of your earrings with the movement.

You turn back to Porter then, showing your back to Frankie, for better or worse. He averts his eyes, lest the way his eyes drop make him feel like even more of a creep than he already is. 

“Tell me, how many people will be in attendance? Professors, I’m assuming.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Porter answers, and Frankie’s a little impressed the man can stand this straight under your disarming charm, “Mostly professors and doctorate students--although, I did hear the dean would be dropping by to visit with some of the few more distinguished alumni.”

You raise your eyebrows with a nod, pursing your lipstick covered lips in a grin, “Well, then, I guess I’ll have to pay another visit. See it all in action, then.”

Porter looks surprised you’d be so interested, as does the rest of the wait staff, who all have the same wide-eyed looks on their faces, jaws dropped and pupils shining with admiration.

“O-of course, ma’am! In fact, we could give you a preliminary tour of the kitchen, if you’d like to see what other measures we’ve taken to prepare for tonight,” Porter practically trips over himself to give you the offer. 

You beam in response, shifting your weight with a chuckle, “Only if I can get a taste of whatever smells so good in there,” you gesture towards the closed door of the kitchen.

Porter nods with a smile and laughs a bit too hard for it to not come off as overeager.

“Of course, ma’am. Why don’t you follow one of our waitresses here? She’ll show you the way.” 

You gladly trail after the women, hips swaying under your pencil skirt as you spare a few shy waves at the remaining spectators, and Frankie just about busts a lung with how long he’d been unconsciously holding his breath. Blending in with the walls really is a chore when the center of attention practically has its own gravitational pull.

After your conversation with Porter, Frankie watches the man assemble his team of servers and busboys, tugging them close to whisper threateningly at them, “Listen, if the boss asks for anything-- _anything_ \--you get it for her. No questions asked. If any of you so much as _look_ at her wrong, it’ll be your ass. Understand?”

The group of youngsters swallow nervously but nod, nevertheless. Porter claps a couple on the back with a nod of his bald head, “Good. Now one of you go tell Chef Bianchi a big fish is coming his way.”

And, after that, it’s like seeing the boss on the lower floors is commonplace (though, no less intimidating.) Every time you make an appearance, managers, shift leaders, and new hires alike trip over their words to properly please you, entirely incompetent in their useless attempts to impress you with superior cleaning supplies or polished salad forks. The entire ritual would be hilarious if not for the way Frankie completely understands how they feel.

 _Hell_ , the first time he saw you he just about stumbled over his own two feet just to open the door for you; he’s hardly one to talk. However, on a more serious note, the gesture’s quite endearing. 

It’s like a piece that was missing is suddenly there, a rusty cog in the machine finally breaking free of its chemical confines. With Sullivans or Johnson or any of the other bosses, it was like the money itself had blinded them, spoiling their vision with green and halcyon, unwilling to see anything that wasn’t a product of the two. But with you, it’s like the color had finally burned through the silver screen.

There were no plastic smiles and ingenuine handshakes, no backhanded compliments or prejudiced looks from the corner of your eyes. Everything that comprised your being was on show to see and touch, liveliness and competence oozing off of you in waves that were impossible to ignore. 

Even the stiff custodial shift leader had to hand it to you: you knew your shit. You were the only person to get him to smile at work since his wife signed their divorce papers back in ‘79.

You went the lengths and took the effort to get to know everybody, to shake their hands and hear their stories. He’d watched you converse with the reception staff and garbagemen all the same, still smiling brightly, as if just meeting them elevated your hopes for the company’s future. 

It’s not hard to see you know how to treat people right, how to get them to loosen up, and it’s even more apparent you give love like your fucking made of it. And with how often you throw it around, Frankie’s willing to bet your heart is bigger than your wallet.

He neglected to think that maybe he’d be on the receiving end of one of your generous conversations if he just came out of hiding. But, no, he thinks even just being in your line of sight might kill him, as evidenced by the way he quickly memorized the sharp sound of your pumps against the tile floor.

With the shoes, he can hear you coming a mile away. 

One day, while assembling a new dessert cart for one of the restaurants near the lobby, that familiar pattern of _clacks_ draws ever nearer, a ticking time bomb before the inevitable explosion. He has no choice but to duck through one of the kitchen doors, peering out the small slats of streaked glass just in time to see you strut past, modest shoulder pads swaying under your tailored blazer with every step.

He lets out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding and slumps against the door-- _that is_ , until someone clears their throat behind him, and he comes face to face with the head pastry chef and a crowd of her timid apprentices. Needless to say, he just about goes deaf with how loudly she scolds him that day.

(On the positive side, she gave him a box of leftover cream puffs in apology afterwards, which he dropped off at Mrs. Velásquez’s desk when he got back to the janitorial offices. That earns him a kiss on the cheek and a dinner invite the next weekend he has his daughter over. Dubois might be a hardass about her kitchen, but the payoff was always worth the punishment.)

Other times it’s simpler and less rewarding.

Tucking awkwardly in on himself as you pass by, or hurriedly pushing into custodial closets in the hallways, nearly tripping over the brooms and mops against the wall to close the door before you turn the corner. 

However, no humane thing is flawless, and that includes Frankie’s little workday pastime. 

One day he’s in the middle of a loading dock hallway on the ground floor, fixing a vent cover on the ceiling while teetering precariously on his ladder. He’s too focused on his burning biceps and sweaty hands to notice much else, like the minute wobbles that come from the blasted contraption every so often.

“Fuck,” he curses under his breath as he fails to line up the screw once again, barely catching the thing in his palm before begging his hands to stop shaking with exertion. 

God, he needed to start training again if just holding his arms up for this long was enough to have him out of breath.

He squints as he lines the screw up, straightening his back to rise his drill to the correct height. However, as soon as the bit makes contact with the head of the screw, the ladder shifts again—this time in a sudden, lurching fashion that _definitely_ wasn’t just a rusted spreader like he’d thought. 

Just as he’s preparing his shoulder blades to take the brunt of the fall, the ladder’s being shoved back up, sending his body shifting with it.

He gasps in relief once he’s firmly back on his feet, managing to regain his balance as he straightens the cap on his head, having almost fallen off with the movement. He takes a deep breath, trying not to let the color on his cheeks show too obviously to whoever just saved him a bottle of aspirin and a boatload of embarrassment.

“I-I’m so sorry, I don’t know what I—“

But any words he might have had on his tongue died the instant his vision focuses on his unlikely savior. 

_You._

It’s _you_ , looking just as prim as you usually do in a trim blazer and pencil skirt set, blouse hanging tantalizingly over your chest as you stare innocently up at him from where you stand, lips as red as ever and parted slightly in shock.

However, aside from his sudden, almost obsessive catalogue of how good you look in every piece of clothing you own, more importantly…

_Why hadn’t he heard you coming?_

A stiff glance downwards confirms his suspicions: flats instead of the usual pumps.

Damn it.

“Boss,” he says, more like a panicked observation than a greeting.

You hardly seem fazed, still looking up at him like he just about lost his life right there on that rickety ladder.

“Are you okay?” You ask hurriedly, scanning his body and face for injuries, as if just standing on the thing was numbering his days, “I didn’t hurt you when I pushed it back, did I? I just saw it tilt and I—I swear you almost _fell_ and I just—“

He tunes out your barrage of questions to gape down at your face, body stock still and sweating like his mind was having trouble processing your existence in and of itself. It’s like his mind is crunching numbers, grinding its gears, trying to comprehend the fact that you’re _here_ , and you’re _talking to him_ , and you just possibly _saved_ him from about a week of bodily pain.

….but you’re still rambling, tongue moving a mile a minute and manicured hands gesturing wildly. He’s never seen you so frazzled, and it’s then that he stupidly realizes he’s supposed to say something in response.

“Oh—no, I’m fine,” he assures with a shake of his head, the action a plea for his thoughts to gather themselves, lest he want to look like a fool, “Don’t worry too much. This ladder’s been a pain since day one. It does this all the time, really.”

Looking at his sheepish smile and taking in his lackluster explanation, you look just as pale (if not _paler)_ than you did two seconds ago.

 _“It does this all the time?”_ you ask, tone stiff with horror and face twisted with worry.

He pauses in shock for a second, rewinding what he just said before realizing how bad it sounds. He tries to find a response somewhere deep in his mind, but dissolves into his own little fit of panic when he comes up empty-handed. He tugs his hat off hsi head as he rushes to correct himself. 

“ _No_ —I mean, _yes_ , but really it’s just a rusted latch, it’s _nothing—“_

He runs his mouth uselessly, not even sure if his words are making sense any longer. Even if they did, he doubts you would have cared, seeing as your expression is still one of watery fright. 

Regardless of his overdone excuses, you still lean in towards the ladder, like you’re ready to catch it should it slide even one more inch down the linoleum flooring.

You suddenly pull out a pad of paper from somewhere in your blazer, tugging a pen from the same pocket before you start hurriedly jotting something down. His words come to a halt at the sight, and he takes the last step off that godforsaken ladder.

“Ma’am, what’re you—“

You click your pen, ripping the top sheet off and shoving it into your blazer pocket once folded several times, “There. You’ll get a new ladder by the end of next week; I’ll make sure of it. No need to use that wretched old thing any longer.”

Seemingly satisfied, you stand a little straighter, that soft smile he’d seen so many times from afar tugging at your lips, and, this time, entirely directed at _him._

He stammers breathlessly.

“No, ma’am, really, I promise it’s not—“

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I caught your name,” you interrupt with a bashful tone, effectively shutting down the argument before it can even start with a quiet sense control anyone would admire.

His tongue stays glued to the roof of his mouth for a second longer before his pupils _finally_ meet your own, committing the depths of your irises to memory in the split second of courage he’s stumbled upon.

He clears his throat.

“Morales. _Francisco_ Morales.”

You smile, tugging his hand from his side for a warm handshake—one his limp wrist and surprised brain can’t even _dream_ of returning.

“ _Francisco Morales,”_ you test the sound on your tongue, and, _god,_ he would drop to his knees right there just to hear you say it one more time, “A pretty name. Stay safe, will you? Can’t exactly do my job if I’m worrying you’ll fall off a ladder the second I walk away.”

He chuckles nervously at your jibe, scratching his neck as he struggles to come up with a coherent sentence that isn’t the same, sappy mush his brain seems to be full of nowadays. 

You smile at him one more time, finally letting his hand drop, before elegantly sliding past him, giving him a small wave over your shoulder as you make your way down the hallway.

He just stands there, body stiff with awkwardness, and dumbly, he returns your wave the minute you turn away from him.

He stares down at his hands afterwards, trying to calm his fuzzy heart and mind, reminding himself it was just coincidence that you happened to stop by.

(He _definitely_ doesn’t mull over the fact you said you’d worry about him when you left.)

══════════════════

The hours come and go, Frankie continues with his odd jobs, and you continue on your adventure of learning everyone’s name in the entire hotel.

Except now Frankie doesn’t try to hide. 

_Sure,_ he’d like to, but it’s like he just can’t help himself. Ever since the day you stopped him from falling in the loading dock, the split second between when he turned and when he started talking has been on replay in his mind. The shape of your face, the slope of your nose, the smell of the perfume that clung to you everywhere you went—they’ve clouded his senses and attached themselves to his skin, following him faithfully no matter how hard he tried to lose them.

He still ducks below his cap when you pass by, blushing when you spare him a glance, purely because he can’t even believe your first impression of him is as a repairman who almost fell off his ladder while merely trying to screw in a vent cover.

_God…_

He likes to think that if he’d had the chance, he’d have taken his own time. He’d have done his hair for once, worn that cologne his mother bought him for his birthday that’s been sitting on his dresser for months now; he would’ve ironed out the wrinkles in his jumpsuit and practiced in the mirror before delivering his introduction in a way that makes you remember him as _Frankie,_ not just one of the hundreds of people you’re now responsible for. 

But what’s done is done, and no amount of embarrassment will be enough to fix it.

It’s like ever since that day, you’ve been purposefully popping up in his path a lot more frequently than before. You pass by him in the halls when he’s between tasks, cross in his peripheral while he’s fixing bar stools in the lounge, the clack of your heels always giving you away.

Now, he hasn’t much of a choice, and he’s fallen into some sort of repetitive loop of dismissive exchanges.

Every passing in the hallway is punctuated by a small tip of his cap in your direction, a quiet “ma’am” coming afterwards in respect. You never verbally greet him, but you never fail to send a smile his way before you’re moving on to your next destination, either.

It’s sort of sad that his heart skips a beat every time it happens.

And this goes on for _days._

The unsure glances; the classic tilt of his hat; the overused, and far-too-familiar-at-this-point honorific slipping past his lips.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

But of course, as soon as he’s come to get over his shyness in the small interactions, things have to change. And in drastic ways, nonetheless.

“Mijo” _[son]_ , Mrs. Velásquez stops him one day just before he enters the locker room to wash up.

“Ven aquí,” _[Come here],_ she gestures with a wave of her hand, and he follows her direction without complaint.

“¿Señora?” _[Ma’am?]_

“El aire acondicionado en la oficina de la jefa se rompió anoche,” _[The air conditioner in the boss’ office broke last night]_ she begins, tapping her perfectly painted nails against the mahogany desk beneath her fingers, “Su secretaria dijo que una de las fans está roto. Eres la única que trabaja mañana en la mañana, así que visítala antes de la comida.” _[Her secretary said one of the fans broke...you’re the only one working tomorrow morning, so pay her a visit before lunch.]_

His heart stops the minute the sentence leaves her mouth. 

The brisk greetings and second-long acknowledgements he could deal with...but being trapped in an office with you? _Alone?_ With nothing but a broken air conditioner to act as a buffer for however long it takes to replace the damn fans?

She might as well have signed his death certificate right then and there.

Aware of nothing but the increasing tightness of his fingers on the handle of his toolbox, he almost misses it when Mrs. Velásquez interjects with a soft “¿entiendes?” _[Got it?]_

He fights a minute long war with himself over whether or not he really does get it, but finally comes to the consensus that his job will always come before the anxiety stirring in his chest, and he promptly steels his resolve.

“Sí, señora.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT UPDATE: MONDAY; FEB 22, 2021
> 
> My Tumblr: [slater-baby](https://slater-baby.tumblr.com)


	3. Chapter 2: La Reina del Castillo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As it turns out, fixing an AC in your office doesn’t lead to Frankie’s untimely death. In fact, it leads to something pretty sweet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay!! Another chapter~~ I hope you all like this little chapter, it's a little longer than normal, but I packed it chock full of a bunch of interactions between Frankie and the reader, so I hope you all will enjoy!!! Once again, there will be another update out next Monday (btw how are you all liking these Monday updates? Should I change them to a different day? Post them at a certain hour?), and there will also be a Javier Peña x reader oneshot out by 7:00PM E tonight on my Tumblr, but the AO3 version will also be up for you to enjoy too~~ I hope you all are doing well!!
> 
> My Tumblr: [slater-baby](https://slater-baby.tumblr.com)

Watching the numbers on the elevator’s floor counter slowly tick upwards, Frankie felt stifled by the walls of the small chamber. It's like the air was thick and hot with a nonexistent tension, a one-sided argument gone wrong against an adversary that was entirely absent. He tugs on his collar, trying not to sweat through his jumpsuit as he clutches his toolbox ever tighter in front of his legs, resisting a small cough.

God, it was only 7 in the morning and the atmosphere was already sweltering. 

When he woke up that morning, Mrs. Velásquez’s words were already pinging around his head like a clapper in a bronze bell, dizzying him with worries he wouldn’t be able to tell were justified or not until the moment he stepped foot on the fifty-first floor.

Speaking of which, the place itself was uncharted territory for people like Frankie--for people like him, who the boss couldn’t be bothered with unless they were somehow a slacker, a thief, a problem, or a corpse on company property. (With the way Sullivans used to run things from the penthouse office, it wasn’t hard to believe most custodial staff and low level workers were marching towards an untimely death of exhaustion, so to say the sentiments were justified is more or less true.) 

He’s never seen the fifty-first floor, let alone navigated it himself. All he’d managed to gather from the few unfortunate wait staff members who’d had the pleasure of being Sullivans’ personal workers during his time there was that the fifty-first floor was an amalgamation of many things, but to say it was any sort of _redeemable_ amalgamation was an overstatement: Black and white office decorum regurgitated onto gold crusted, grade-A, capitalistic assholes with nothing but 15,000 square feet of peak American bureaucracy to keep them entertained. From the sound of it, the poor fuckers were practically chained to their desks, and lord knows anyone with a finance degree has about enough bitterness to put lemon-zested Colombian coffee to shame.

Frankie just hopes you’ve given your staff a little more fresh air than Sullivans had allowed, if only to make this experience just a slight bit easier on his poor, anxiety ridden brain.

The panel _dings_ and the embellished doors slide open with a quiet _click._

And for all intents and purposes, the wait-staff weren’t wrong: the fifty-first floor works like a well-oiled machine (if not a bit of a bored one). 

Not an eye turns towards him as he makes his way through the maze of cubicles, the continuous and rapid clack of keyboards paving his way, a telephone ringing somewhere in the background. Papers change hands with an urgency almost unbefitting of the stiff aura of the floor, muffled words spoken between breaths of expensive cigarette smoke and backhanded pleasantries amidst coworkers. In his absolute fascination with the heavy gray-tone of the entire ordeal, he almost walks into some poor secretary, the edge of his toolbox leaving a small rip in the bottom of her pencil skirt.

She barely stays long enough for him to stutter through a surprised apology, sliding past him with nothing but a narrowly concealed look of disgust. He watches her fast paced strut away from him for a few moments before clearing his head. A few confused looks are thrown at him as he makes his way towards the adjacent collection of back rooms, which Mrs. Velásquez told him would lead to the penthouse office, but as soon as they catch sight of his tool box, they quickly turn back to their work, as if he was merely another distraction getting in between them and their paycheck.

When he finally has the luxury of closing the door behind himself at the end of the long stretch of crowded cubicles, he breathes a sigh of relief. This new hallway is a lot smaller, yet feels infinitely larger than the office space, which was filled to the point of almost overflowing with needless ire. He listens to his shoes scuff along the polished floor, passing several conference rooms before a larger foyer comes into view.

As he steps into the space, he can’t help but stare up at the ornate sun roof, painting winding shadows across the walls and floors, bathing it in a natural flaxen hue. Only one keyboard is to be heard anymore, the sound ricocheting coldly off the sterile walls and high ceiling like bullets. He turns his attention to the long mahogany desk against another wall, and with it, the prim aide sitting behind the counter.

She doesn’t even lift her head as he walks forward, only greeting him once he’s close enough to lay a fist on the cool marble countertop. 

“Mr. Morales,” she acknowledges with a tight smile, her uniform neck-scarf shifting with the movement, “Here for the air conditioner I assume?”

He only stares blankly back at her, opening his mouth to answer, only to come up with a soft clearing of his throat and a nervous nod of his head. She hums in response, elegantly moving from behind the counter towards another door to her right. She holds it open for him as he passes, taking in another high-ceiling hallway with dim lights and marble accents. His breaths seem almost unnaturally loud in his ears, and he tries to focus singularly on the way the aide’s heels clack against the tile floor, each step a careful reverberation in the grand entrance way.

She leads him up to a large set of double doors, framed on each side by opaque glass and decorative potted plants. Her hands are clasped together in front of her when she bids him goodbye, leaving him to his own devices with another saccharine smile and a polite _“the boss is expecting you.”_

And it’s then that reality begins to crush him. 

For as much as the rooms themselves are luxurious in their quality, they’re entirely devoid of the emotion and familiarity the staff on the lower floors have. It’s cold, calculated, and cut-throat, needlessly decorated with all the bells and whistles an office space could fit in order to disguise its frantic movement. He sticks out like a sore thumb among the pristine uniforms of the staff, trudging through the single-minded office like he was a ghost rather than a person: completely unseen by anyone he hadn’t dsiturbed. 

It’s exhausting just _existing_ in this separate world, and for as much as your presence dazzled the hotel with star studded words and gestures, he wanted nothing more than to escape this parallel reality and throw his two cents in.

But alas, he’s a man on a mission, and if he doesn’t get those fans replaced, Mrs. Velásquez will have a lot more fear to instill in him than the nameless office workers he’d brushed past earlier.

He takes another deep breath and raises his hand to trepidatiously knock on the door. 

He stands awkwardly afterwards, just trying to memorize the pattern of the wood grain on the door front, but the thing is tugged away from him a little faster than he originally anticipated, stopping his menial task before it could really even start. He has to look down a few inches to face you, but when he does catch sight of you, eyes lighting up at his appearance, he refuses to meet your gaze.

You sigh a fake sigh of relief, “Thank god you’re here, Francisco. It’s hotter than the seventh circle of hell up here.”

He nearly chokes on an inhale when he hears you pronounce his name. Well, his full name--but his name nonetheless.

 _You actually remember it?_

Huh...Maybe all that walking around and starting conversations wasn’t just for show.

He coughs, trying not to let his toolbox swing too wildly when he raises one of his arms to scratch at the back of his neck; a bad, nervous habit of his. 

“Uh--” another small cough, “Yeah, the air conditioner.”

“Please, come in,” you smile before opening the door for him and motioning for him to walk in. You step aside and he stiffly follows, trying not to gape at the scene that awaits him.

If he thought even just the hallway was overdone in its decoration, your office is nothing short of pure _indulgence_ in every sense of the word. 

Polished floor to ceiling windows, bathing the entire room in natural morning light unobstructed by the skyline in the background; a large, expensive desk and matching chair that probably cost more than any arm or leg Frankie could think of; a small bar on the other side of the room with about an entire distillery’s worth of different bottles behind the counter--all of which, were high-end brands Frankie couldn’t imagine stomaching. 

The windows are large enough to illuminate the place pretty well, hence the fact you hadn’t turned the lights on, painting gray and dark shadows where glitz and vermeil should have been, like you hadn’t truly settled in yet. Like you were still a bit lost amidst the formality of it all.

He moves past that fact with grit teeth, tuning into your voice when it rings out against the walls once again.

“Sorry for dragging you up here so early,” you start, taking a gentle seat on top of one of the bar stools, having to hop up onto it just to get in a comfortable position, “I told Sophie not to bother with it until at least 10 AM, but apparently I’m not the only one going a little crazy with the heat.” 

You finish that line with a small chuckle, leaning back against the bartop with spread arms, cold morning light painting your face in a way that drains the true color from its complexion, leaving angles in its wake. 

He takes another gander at the skyline, spotting the ACU in one corner before walking purposefully towards it.

“It’s not a problem, ma’am. I come into work early, anyways. Besides, I’ve never seen the fifty-first floor before,” he starts, turning his back to you and kneeling on the marble floor next to the unit. God, just thinking back on his entire experience makes him want to have both feet planted firmly on the ground floor for the rest of his godforsaken employment, but for the sake of not hurting your feelings, “it was nice.”

“You’ve never seen the fifty-first floor before?” you ask, eyebrow quirked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he answers as he flicks the power off on the unit.

You purse your lips.

“How long have you worked here, Francisco?”

Usually, he’d have corrected his company by now. _It’s Frankie, not Francisco._ He hasn’t been called Francisco seriously since his enlistment, and even then, the drill sergeants thought it was too much of a mouth-full, hence _Catfish._

“Five years, ma’am.” 

He can feel you watching him curiously over his shoulder as he digs through the unit--and, yep, sure enough he comes face to face with a dead capacitor hardly a second later.

You furrow your brows, gently gesturing towards him with an acrylic nail, “So wait, you’re telling me you’ve worked here for _five_ years and you’ve _never_ been to the fifty-first floor?”

He swallows, pulling the dead capacitor out with a little more force than necessary.

“Uh, apparently so.”

You hum, unspoken words sitting heavily on your facial expression. Frankie’s a little too preoccupied with his racing heart and shaking hands to try and guess what that means. He watches you out of the corner of your eyes as you stand with a small sigh; you stretch your arms above your head with a slight whimper in the back of your throat, and Frankie tries valiantly not to peer over at the way your top scrunches beautifully around your shoulder blades. 

He turns his attention back to the capacitor in his hands, getting the wires in the unit ready for the new one sitting at his side. He hears your heels clack a few times as you walk around the bar. 

When he hears liquid pouring, however, he raises a curious eye towards you.

You stand at the bar, a bottle of champagne in your hand as you pour a generous helping into a wine flute.

You don’t miss his scandalized look, having been _very_ thinly veiled. 

You chuckle with a sheepish smile.

“Don’t look at me like that,” you chide softly between giggles, “This is for mimosas. I’m not usually a day drinker, I promise.”

He scoffs softly under his breath, managing a small quirk of his lips. He turns back to the unit, grabbing a screwdriver from his tool box as he goes.

“You want one?” you offer from behind him.

He’s momentarily blindsided by your kindness, but realizes with a small curse inside his head that he probably shouldn’t be drinking on the job--let alone at _7 in the morning._

He coughs for about the fourth time since he walked in, “Um--no, thank you, ma’am.”

He continues tinkering away while you shuffle behind him, getting lost in the feeling of the metal between his fingers, the only thing distracting him from the elegant way you move, the way your printed skirt effortlessly hugs your hips. He blushes. 

God, he can’t even _think_ about you without becoming embarrassed. 

Suddenly, though, that familiar parisian perfume is wafting his way, enveloping his body in a warm, comforting cloud of sweetness. He resists turning--that is, until a soft _clink_ sounds against the floor at his feet.

He looks beside him at the mimosa now resting patiently next to his kneeling form, then back up to stare at you in shock.

You smile at him, taking a sip from your own drink, “Don’t worry. I won’t tell the boss.”

He huffs a bit at that, dropping his head to look down at the drink in exasperation. 

_Fuck it_ , he decides and reaches for the glass. And, for as much money as this thing probably costs, it’s nice to note it tastes exactly like every mimosa he’d ever had before: refreshing, tangy.

Your heels click as you walk back to your seat, nearly spilling your drink down your shirt as you try to hop up onto the bar stool that was a little too high for even your precarious heels to deal with. 

_How charming._

He smiles as he works, enjoying the way the tension has all but dissipated from the air with your clumsy movements.

This time, it’s you that clears your throat.

“So,” you start, taking another sip between words, “You always been a repairman? You work at another place before coming over here, or...?”

His hands freeze where they hang, trying to rewire the new capacitor. 

_Oh, so we’re getting straight to the thick of it._

He remains silent for a second, debating whether or not to tell the truth. After all, people didn’t always respond best to answers they didn’t know they didn’t want. He fiddles his fingers, unsure of how you see him in this moment.

Is it as a poor, low-level repairman, here to fix your AC and gape at all the money you had that he didn’t?

Or, as respectful, welcome company, here to share mimosas with you and talk shop amidst the dead, heated air?

He hopes a little bit of both, just to save himself the humiliation that usually comes with the confession.

“Uh, I was in the military; I became a captain in the army after about ten years of service.”

You raise your eyebrows over your glass, nodding along with his response.

“You fought in the war?”

He opens his mouth, content to entirely ignore that question if he could. But alas, he didn’t want to find out how hard Mrs. Velásquez would hit him if she found out he was rude to the boss, so he nods stiffly, refusing to look past his glass as he takes another drink.

You nod once again, silently recognizing the unspoken boundary and quickly leaving it where it lays. You stand from your stool once again, styled hair bouncing as you drain the rest of your glass in one go.

“ _Captain Francisco Morales_ ,” you say with a lilt in your voice, lightening the mood instantly with the frilly way your voice curves around the letters, “Fits you.”

He laughs wholeheartedly at that, giving up on the AC for now just to silently send you his appreciation through the look in his eyes. The way you pronounce his title is unlike he’s ever heard it before, soft and high with the pitch in your voice, said with admiration rather than fear.

“How so?”

You hum as you pour another drink, grinning from the sound of your voice, “Just a feeling. You look like a captain, what with your build and all. You look strong; it’s fitting.”

You shrug.

He flushes up to the tips of his ears at your comment, looking back down at his hands to avoid having you pick out the barely contained panic now swimming in his facial expression. For the most part, you look wholly unaffected, eagerly sipping your second mimosa, as if you were singularly focused on that action and nothing else. 

He clears his throat, stuttering out a small _thank you_ , mentally smacking himself upside the head, willing his scrambled brains to focus on anything other than the way your lips look wrapped around the edge of a wine flute.

“Well, what about you? What did you do before working here?” he doesn’t know what possessed him to ask the question, maybe some half-vindictive feeling in his chest that wants to get back at you for making him blush. But, nonetheless, it’s out there now, and if you react badly, Frankie will just have to live with the consequences for as long as he’s stuck in his office. 

You send him a look once you swallow, recognizing the challenge with a playful tip of your head. 

“I did a lot of paperwork,” you answer, “Not much more than that, really. I’d invested a good amount of stock during the second round of renovations, and when the time came for Sullivans to move on to greener pastures, so to speak, I had the funds to keep the place all for myself.”

You finish the sentence with a small flourish, as if it was a great achievement of yours to have ownership of the place. And wasn’t it, though? Especially considering how young you were, being a woman no less. In such a cut-throat business, Frankie knew it couldn’t have been easy. He nods in acknowledgement.

“Sounds fun.”

“It’s _rivetingVietnam_ , but...”

He laughs, quick and unbridled, at the insensitive joke. For as much as he suffered through the horrors of Vietnam, witnessed all the injustice and destruction, felt the nightmares when they woke him up at night, he wasn’t a stickler about his experience. It’s nice to make light of it every once in a while, even if he knows some piece of his mind will always be stuck back in Hanoi. 

You slump slightly at his reaction, shoulders relaxing, as if you’d thrown it out there half-expecting him to blow up on you. 

But when he doesn’t blow up, and even continues with a small quip about ripping his pants on barbed wire during basic training, you have no reason not to turn your smile towards him completely.

And from then on, it’s like the words (and the alcohol) just flow by themselves.

He spends about an hour on the AC when it really only should have taken 20 minutes, distracted by the shine in your eyes and the familiar way you speak to him, like he was an old friend rather than an employee, all the while pushing drink after drink into his hand, promising each time to handle it if he got in any trouble.

By the end of it all, he’d drank 3 mimosas in one hour, and he’d talked more to anyone than had since his wife divorced him. 

You talked about his daughter.

_(“You’re a father?”_

_“Yep, and I’ve got the dad-bod to prove it.”_

_You laughed, “Aw, c’mon, don’t say that. The soft tummy’s cute. I’m sure your daughter’s a peach. What’s her name?”_

_At this point, he’s used to the feeling of blood rushing to his cheeks, “Rosalia.”)_

You talked about music.

_(“Lemme guess, you’re a seventies type of guy?”_

_“....How’d you know?”_

_“I didn’t. Something about you just screams ‘Fleetwood Mac.’”)_

You talked about work.

_(“What is it that you do exactly?”_

_“What do you mean? With all this?” you’d gestured around the room._

_“Yeah.”_

_“I work miracles is what it seems like nowadays,” you’d said with a heavy sip of your drink tiredness brimming in your eyes._

_He’d chuckled)_

And when he’d finally finished with the air con, the discussion had moved onto compensation.

“C’mon, Francisco, just take the money,” you’d practically pleaded with him, still calling him by his full name with that sweet lilt of yours. He hadn’t made a single move to correct you.

“The repair fee is all a part of my salary,” he’d explained pushing aside the egregious amount of money you were shoving his way, “Besides, a broken fan isn’t gonna cost you any more than $80, boss.”

What you were holding had to be somewhere near $400, practically begging him to take it off your hands. Frankie’s head spins at the numbers. As much as he could use the money, he’d fix an air con for a pretty girl like you any day. Especially if he could get half-way drunk off of free drinks in the process.

“Please, I’m not letting you leave without at least paying you _something_ ,” you continued, brows furrowed and worried, like it’d genuinely hurt you if his wallet went unstuffed before he left the floor.

“No, boss, I’m telling you, it’s _fine_ ,” he finishes, packing up his toolbox while you stare, lips pursed and eyes drunkenly scanning his taller form in front of you. You cross your arms, seemingly giving into his argument.

Reluctantly, he follows you towards the door, watching the way your hips sway with longing in his tipsy brain right up until the moment you open it for him.

Just as he’s about to walk away, you catch him by the sleeve, holding out the money one last time with a quirked brow.

He sighs and shakes his head with a chuckle, looking you in the face perhaps for the first time since he walked in this morning. He bites his tongue, trying to calm his beating heart before he says the next word.

“Tell you what,” he starts, and the way you straighten with seriousness has him swooning, “Buy me a drink sometime and we’ll call it even.”

You bite your lip, as if considering the offer, before eventually letting your mouth fall back into a barely placated smile. You tuck the bills back under the waistband of your skirt with a small sigh, but stick him with an amused look, nonetheless.

“If that’s what you want, _Captain Morales_ ,” you tease.

“Pleasure doing business with you, _ma’am_ ,” he parrots back, and you giggle one last time, before the door is closing behind you, parisian perfume and fruity alcohol stuck onto his senses like glue.

Unexpectedly, he leaves the fifty-first floor with a smile.

══════════════════

And just like he’d expected, the dreaded day in the office changes things. Though, this time around, it’s for the better. With the nitty gritty, awkwardness, and formalities all out of the way now, there is nothing left but the pleasantries.

It’s all-consuming and long-lasting, something that hangs over his head every day in the hotel for better or worse. 

It’s bright, is what it is. 

It’s brilliant and golden when it lingers in the air, but murky when it envelops his mind, where he’s free to wonder if that day would have gone any different were you not the CEO of a major hotel chain, and if he weren’t a measly repairman on your staff.

Did you always offer your guests mimosas at 7 in the morning? Did you always let them stay long after they were done with their business there, just because you liked the company? Did you smile at everyone like that (or was it just him)?

His brain likes to tell him that it’s only him. That you only pop the champagne and crack risky jokes for him, that you think he’s special, worth buying a drink for. It’s stupid, but just that thought alone brings him a smile for the remainder of the week. 

He’s _special._

There comes a day where he’s replacing a broken mirror in one of the hotel rooms when his mind wanders to you, replaying every word you’d said to him in the hour he spent there, like his imagination hadn’t watched the sequence of events a thousand times through since Tuesday. He catches himself smirking softly in the shattered pieces, stomach filling with butterflies when he realizes just how _happy_ he is in this moment

There were very few things that gave him the kind of joy you gave him. Things like his daughter, his friends, his mother, and (not as important but equally as mentionable) vanilla coke. It was the kind of elation that started deep in your stomach and crawled its way into your throat, the kind that made it feel like you were high on life itself, unable to be affected by anything else.

Now, every time you pass in the hallway, he tips his hat with the customary ‘ _ma’am.’_ Only now, you reply back with a mock salute and a quiet _‘Captain_ ’ under your breath, drawing a gummy grin out of him every time without fail. And don’t think he misses you trying to hide your own smiles, either. 

(The way your lips look with that scarlet lipstick should be a _crime_.)

However, if things settle down and you’re somehow not swamped with work like you usually are, you actually stop to talk to him. 

By now, you’ve got pretty much everything about his daughter memorized to a T: her birthday’s July 7th; she’s _convinced_ she’s going to become a prima ballerina when she grows up; and worst of all, she’s got an insatiable sweet tooth that Frankie can’t seem to keep up with no matter how many treats her grandmother slips her while Frankie’s at work.

But, in tandem, Frankie’s got everything about you memorized as well: you take your sugar and milk with coffee instead of the other way around; you prefer Lucky Strike cigarettes, but he’s never seen you smoke: you’d _die_ for Micheal Jackson if you could, though Frankie has no doubt you’re probably influential enough to meet him one day if you wanted to.

And yet, even through the easy conversations and inside jokes, he remains captivated by you. 

He still blushes when you make off handed comments about the way he looks or how he works, he still ducks below his hat when you walk into a room, and worst of all, he still gapes at your beauty every time you pass. 

It’s an obsession at this point, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

There comes a day where he’s installing new drain covers on one of the pools on the lower deck, the wind from the seashore whipping under his hat as he works. He can hear music from some speaker on the other side of the beach blasting, hundreds of patrons already a few rounds deep at the open-air bikini bar, despite it only being 1 PM. It’s empty where he is, more or less, since he’s doing maintenance on the pool. Luckily, though, he’s got Mr. Kurokawa to keep him company while he fiddles with his tools. The man’s taking advantage of the lack of a crowd to trim a few of the smaller palms by the deckside, regaling Frankie with the story of how he first met his wife, still madly in love with her even 60 years later.

He’s half listening, half-trying to shield his eyes from the harsh summer sun as he works, squinting from beneath his ball cap. He screws in another drain cover on the bottom floor, before moving over to one side of the pool to inspect the filter cover. 

He pulls off his hat, running a hand through his sweat-slicked hair, only to ease up into a big stretch when the sting in his back gets the better of him. He closes his eyes against the bright sunlight until the sky is obstructed by a cloud, and that’s when he sees you. You’re on one of the restaurant balconies of the hotel, soaking up the sun with a group of eager businessmen sat in a circle around you, a bottle of wine opened on the table and a rack of unimaginably expensive appetizers on display. You’ve got your sunglasses back on, the sun bouncing off the lenses, scattering your jewelry-clad neck in an array of silver sparkles. 

He loses his breath. Though, the real surprise comes when you stand from the table. You send a quick word to the men at the table, walking over to lean on the balcony railing with your Motorola mobile phone in hand. You look ethereal in the summer air, hair waving in the beachside wind, but the dress you’re wearing--the one that cinches just right around the waist--steals the show. He watches you chatter on to the person on the other line for a few moments, completely mesmerized.

“If you keep staring at the sun like that, boy, you’re gonna burn your eyes out,” Mr. Kurokawa yells from over his shoulder, and Frankie shocks out of his stupor with a flinch, grabbing his screwdriver once again before moving onto the next drain. 

He’s so distracted by your character that he hardly remembers the Motorola in your hand costs about $4,000 dollars.

══════════════════

With the sudden lightness he’s been feeling, it’s easy to get lost in the emotion. Hence why he’s spending his Thursday night late at the hotel, still working well after midnight, even after Mrs. Velásquez retired to go home. It’s close to a quarter ‘till, yet he’s still here, patching up a few holes in the drywall after a group of prep-school boys shoulder checked the partition a little harder than necessary (like the little pricks they are).

He’s got an old Walkman strapped to his waistband, one he found at a garage sale while browsing for good records. He didn’t think twice before buying it; those days spent down in the basement would have driven him insane without the thing. Before Mrs. Velásquez left tonight, she loaded his hands with a few new tapes he could listen to while fixing the holes, claiming the music might keep him awake longer. 

And it definitely has. 

Even after her quick departure, he’s still got the first tape in the player, having listened to it a few times over just to learn the words. Now he’s in a dimly lit hallway on the twentieth floor, gently swaying his hips as he speaks the words lowly to himself, passionately singing the chorus under his breath as he covers another piece of mesh tape with compound.

“Que todo el mundo te cante, que todo el mundo te mime,” _[May all the world sing to you, may all the world pamper you]_ he smiles, rocking his head to the beat, singing the next few lines exaggeratedly to match his giddy mood, “Permita que me arrepienta--oh, mi bella cenicienta,” _[Let me regret today, oh, my beautiful Cinderella]._

When he gets to the refrain, his voice cracks around the words but he continues, completely enchanted by the melody.

Well, he’s enchanted _until_ someone tugs the headphones from around his neck, causing him to almost drop the putty knife with a jump. He turns with a gasp, skin already going red as he turns to face his assailant.

….Only to find you there, a beaming grin splitting your face as the music continues softly through his headphones. If anything, he only blushes harder, immediately dropping his gaze when he realizes you just watched him shake his hips and whisper to himself over some sappy salsa song on his tape.

“What’re you doing?” you ask, resisting a laugh as you stare him down.

He swipes the headphones from your grasp a little harder than necessary, turning back to the drywall like he was entirely focused on the task when you walked up. 

“Patching the drywall,” he answers with an ingenuine scowl, nervously smoothing over the putty on the mesh tape.

“Mm-hmm,” you hum, leaning against the wall next to where he was working, unconvinced, “Sure, you were.”

He grumbles a bit under his breath, figuring he can get away with it without having to worry about losing his job at this point in your relationship (the fact he could even say he _had_ a relationship with you has continuously blown his mind as of late). 

You let the silence go on a bit longer, playfully biting your lips while he pointedly ignores your presence out of embarrassment. 

“What song were you listening to?” You blurt out of nowhere, crossing your arms.

He looks down at the tape on his waist, clearing his throat without meeting your eye. 

“It’s called _Cali Pachanguero_ ,” he replies while he pops the tape, handing it over for you to inspect. You turn it between your fingers, studying the label on top, like it’d tell you everything you needed to know about the music he liked. 

“What’s it about?” 

He watches you try to mouth the foreign words to yourself, running your nail over each sentence, tracing the letters. He clasps his hands in front of himself, looking at the way his fingers interlock.

“A girl,” he replies, wanting nothing more than to say ‘you.’ Because he only had one thing on his mind the entire song, and it definitely wasn’t some nameless woman in Colombia. Even if he’s only known you a short time, he can’t take you off his mind, even when he’s unfocused and hypnotized by some catchy song on his Walkman.

You nod with a smile, gently handing him back the tape before standing up straight. He takes a deep breath when he turns back, grabbing a new glob of compound on his knife to fill another empty space. He expects you to move along, or maybe to tell him to go home. It is nearing 1 AM at this point, after all.

But you do neither.

Instead, you ask, “You speak Spanish?”

He nods his head in affirmation, facing away from you, still hot with shame from earlier.

“My parents are from Mexico,” he adds. 

He hears your heels scuff against the floor, too focused on the way the putty bleeds through the holes in the mesh to divert his attention just yet. You clear your throat, and this time, it’s you who has to avert your gaze. 

“‘Sounds pretty,” you say, “You should teach me sometime.”

His lungs freeze at your words, hands stilling as he covers the tape. He can’t resist the smirk that shapes his face at that, and he stares down at the floor, looking at the size difference between his work shoes and your petite heels like it was the most interesting thing in the world.

“Yeah,” he manages, pulling his cap further down his head to try and draw attention away from his smiling eyes, “Yeah, I’d love to.”

You nod vigorously in return, hair puffing up at the shaky movement and he laughs at your frazzled look. You run a hand across your hairline to try and alleviate some of the static, before steadying yourself on your feet.

“Well,” you gesture to the drywall with a small step backwards, “I’ll leave you to it, then. Be careful getting home, okay?”

He tips his hat at your small retreat, still grinning fiercely, “Of course. G’night, _ma’am_.”

You giggle at the emphasis he adds to the word, waving at him as you go, “‘Night, _Captain._ ”

For the rest of the night, he leaves the same tape on repeat, mouthing the words with new purpose, red lips and tiny high heels on his mind the entire time.

══════════════════

Friday was a complete juxtaposition to the rest of the week. While Wednesday and Tuesday were all sunshine and smiles, clear skies and gentle surf, Friday comes with a bang.

Literally.

He’s woken up by a loud clap of thunder rather than his alarm clock, a rarity in southern California. He peers out the barely lit curtains, the sound of rain battering his bedroom window punctuating his confused survey of the parking lot. The skies are clouded with gray, a generous downpour sending the leaves of the trees and flowers dancing under their spray.

Like usual, he dons his hat and jumpsuit, tugging a jacket over his shoulders before he steps out the door. Despite nearly sprinting to his truck, the tan fabric over his back and chest still soak through with water, sticking uncomfortably to his shirt as he cranks the heat in the car. He drives all the way to the Chapman with his windshield wipers on full speed, staring up at the ominous rolling of the sky with a furrow of his brow at every stop light, like it had personally offended him.

Without the bikini bars, hot tubs, and surf to distract the guests, the hotel itself is crowded. The restaurants are almost overrun with sudden dinner reservations, the valet boys running in and out the entrance doors with car keys jingling in their hands, and to top it all off, a near _horde_ of suits all stand in the lobby, chatting about this or that after some important business meeting. 

Frankie wades patiently through the crowd, checking his wrist watch every now and then to make sure he wasn’t running late, but for the most part, is completely content with letting the others sweep him along towards the employee entrance. He only halts in his step when he sees you across the way, seemingly standing in your own little bubble of space while you peer worriedly out the windows.

As per usual, your outfit is pristine, paired with an expensive handbag at your shoulder (though, sans the sunglasses this time). His face lights up at your presence, and immediately he’s shifting directions, gently pushing past the crowd of suits to make his way towards you.

With the look on your face, he can at least guess the rain is giving you some trouble. Being the boss of the hotel you obviously wouldn’t need a ride from Frankie; your personal driver had that covered. But if you needed to get something in the parking lot, or so much as needed to meet your driver at the curb, Frankie would be shucking off his suede jacket in a moment’s notice, even if it was threadbare and hardly adequate.

A valet brushes past his shoulder, knocking him back a few steps, though he quickly regains his footing. Just as he’s about to call your name, however, someone else comes into view, and instantly Frankie’s smile falls like a raindrop.

Another man--a businessman by the looks of things--struts up to you from the entrance way, shaking rain from his hair as he goes. He gestures towards the windows with a sheepish look, and you return his sentiments in kind, saying something quiet enough for him to have to lean in to hear it amidst the chaos of the lobby.

The man is young and good looking, charcoal suit ironed to perfection with a complicated knot in his tie Frankie knew he would never be able to recreate on himself. He looked like he’d just walked off the cover of a magazine--all straight lines and enviable charm--and judging by the hefty watch on his wrist, maybe he really had. He was a million dollars, and fit your perfection with a brand of his own.

Frankie watches as the man hands you an umbrella, pointing over his shoulder while looking down at you with a shy smile. He clenches his fists by his side, eyes going unfocused as you respond to the man’s words, accepting the umbrella with a tiny grin. There’s something heavy in place of his heart at the moment, a hunk of rock weighing down his lungs and shoulders, forcing him to take slow breaths as you slowly walk towards the entrance with the man. He follows you with his gaze as you go, watching you disappear into the storm behind the glass, taking with you the excitement he’d felt just moments ago.

And like it always does, reality comes crashing down in waves.

You were the boss. The CEO. The head chairperson, _and_ the Queen of the castle, so to speak. For all your familiar gestures and flattering minutes spent wasted on him, there was an equal amount of effort and time spent elsewhere, countless hours spent in that _other world_ , where money and contrite reign supreme over 7 AM mimosas and sappy salsa music. 

You belonged to that other world--hell, in a way, you were _comprised_ of it, the quintessential peak of hard work and glamor encased in a small, woman-shaped capsule for the world (Frankie included) to marvel at.

Where you ruled from the throne in abject glory, he muddled aimlessly in the darkness, just one small blip on your radar when thousands of others were vying for your attention. 

He was no king to your queen, at least not in this lifetime. And that realization hurt.

It hurt so, _so bad_.

He turned back towards the employee entrance, smile completely washed away by the stupid cracking of the dream he’d been living in for a week. He’s slower than usual at getting his tools together, idling nervously in front of the mirror of the locker room, looking at his own face, trying to imagine himself in that man’s place. He tried to wear the suit himself, tried to slick his hair back in imitation, just to see if it’d make a difference.

But when repairman Francisco Morales was still staring back at him through the mirror at the end of all that posturing and posing, he let his thoughts drip away like rainwater, and reluctantly got to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT UPDATE: MONDAY, MARCH 1; 2021.
> 
> My Tumblr: [slater-baby](https://slater-baby.tumblr.com)


	4. Chapter 3:La Pequeña Princesa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Can a princess marry a knight?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello~~ okay so this week has been really weird!! My car broke down yesterday and I couldn't finish writing, so High Rise (AO3) and High Rise (Tumblr) are actually updating on the same day ksjdfkajdf however!! For those of you who are excited for the AO3 update, I hope you enjoy this chapter a lot!! There isn't a lot of content between Frankie and the Reader, but the overall message of the story is very important moving forward~~ and don't worry!! Next Chapter will have a special surprise to make up for it ;)
> 
> My Tumblr: [slater-baby](https://slater-baby.tumblr.com)

Reality is elusive. It’s something that comes and goes in pulses, scatters your brain and leaves you for sporadic instances where your mind finds the courage to wish for _more_ , to wish for _better_. And as grounding and comforting as reality can be, it’s equally as disappointing.

And for Frankie, that extends to every corner. 

What once was gold-tipped is now lackluster paint chipping at the edges; it’s a silly dream imploding on the upper floors, where morning mimosas and stupid songs on his Walkman convinced him his worth was far more than the price tag engraved on his soul.

Reality hurts. It really hurts.

What’s worse, though, is that he let it get this bad at all. It wasn’t even for that long a time--just a week. A single _stupid, delusional_ week, where his brain raved on the little attention you could have (and maybe would have) afforded to anyone else, given the chance. He’d completely lived in that second world, where he wasn’t an ex-vet repairman making fifteen-hundred a month, and you weren’t a millionaire with a mobile phone that costs $4,000 alone.

It’s insane. But above all, it’s shameful. Shameful, humiliating, and embarrassing that he, for a second, dreamed of what wasn’t his. Let alone, something that existed in an entirely different plane than him.

But that’s just the way it is, isn’t it?

Talk all you want about honor, happiness, or some other bullshit. _Money_ is the thing that makes the world go round, nothing else. Everyone knows that, but no one wants to admit the cruel reality that everything happens more because of silver spoons that any reason the universe dictates. The world is defined by those who _have_ , and those who _have not_. Regardless of love or other doleful emotions, it's the way the Earth spins, the way the stars hang on the horizon and the reason the sky hasn’t come crashing down just yet. It’s the foundation of life itself, and there’s no escaping it now.

What’s that saying? _Love does much, but money does everything…?_

Yeah, Frankie understands it now. Actually, better said, understands it _again_ after living without it for seven days. And what a foolish seven days those had been.

He comes home that night soaking wet from the downpour that just refused to stop. His hat is completely saturated with water, brown curls raining their own little drops down the entrance way of his apartment, flagged on each side by large, muddy boot prints that follow him everywhere he goes. 

He shouldn’t be this upset over something that really could mean nothing.

He doesn’t have a right to be sad, or mad, or whatever it is he’s feeling.

( _Jealousy?_ His mind accuses, but he crumples up the thought and throws it away before he can think about it too deeply.)

He never staked a claim on you. You were never his, and he was never yours. Even if your words had made him feel like the center of the universe...even if the way you called him _Captain_ and remembered the name of his daughter blurred the lines.

 _God_ , even now, just _listen_ to him.

It’s like he’s a teenager trapped in an overgrown, adult body. It’s all hypocritical and overdramatic, how he had you on his mind for hours on end only to get this worked up just because he saw another man talk to you.

(...A very rich, very handsome, very _dissimilar_ man talk to you).

He peels his wet jacket off his shoulders, leaving it to lie damply on the floor rather than hanging it up. He throws his hat on the kitchen counter as he passes, snagging a beer from the fridge because he feels like he deserves it simply for no other reason than that he _does._

He settles on the couch with a slow sigh, not having even bothered to turn on the lights around the apartment, just letting the water and grey skies from outside hang around the room, too. He stares down at the bottle in his hand, tracing over the label with his thumb while rain continues to beat down on the roof above him.

Maybe he’d have enjoyed it more if he wasn’t so lost in his thoughts. Rain was a rarity around these parts, just like satisfaction seemed to be nowadays. 

LA may have been the sunshine city, but it was the literal definition of _“the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”_ Sure, everyone in LA was a part of a faction or two--maybe even subscribed to the notion that success just naturally came with the territory--but no one could deny that what you see and what you get are two different things.

For him, it was the waves and gentle sand that inevitably faded to leaky pipes and damp basements with time. Frankie wonders how many others in LA feel the same scorching normalcy as he does. Do they burn under the skin with emotion? Feel like LA could have scratched that incessant itch that constantly tells you you were meant for more? Meant for greater?

The truth is, not everyone is meant for greater. A lot of people are just meant for average. And everyone--Frankie included--was dealt their hand a long time ago, and when it’s time to fold, it’s time to fold.

And that’s okay. It really is, because average is _good_. Hell, sometimes _average_ is more than _just average_. Sometimes it’s everything a person needs in their life, everything they wanted and asked for.

He takes a swig as he reaches for the remote.

Somehow, he feels like average doesn’t fit him, but he’ll dance if the shooter asks.

With the light from the TV, the world fades into black and white. He hadn’t gotten around to upgrading it yet, probably won’t for a while, even if the gray tone catches the edges of the living room just a little too hard. He can hear the sound of the TV in the background, the static-washed notes of some rerun bleeding through the air, but he isn’t listening.

Yeah, reality sucks.

It sucked when he came back from deployment, just to be reminded of how detestable his service was. It sucked when the eighties hit and cocaine was suddenly more important than anything he could think of. It sucked when his ex-wife left him and took poor Rosalia with her, throwing over her shoulder the meagre promise of weekend visits, like it was a bone and he was a starving dog.

Reality sucked then, and it especially sucks now.

Not because this situation is anything worse than what he’d gone through before, but because his expectations were standing on the fifty-first floor, when the world knew Frankie Morales would always be stuck in the basement. 

That night, he gets drunk on the sofa and eats through two boxes of frozen pizza, just because he can. And when he falls asleep on the couch, TV still on and blaring, he doesn’t make an effort to remember his dream when he wakes up.

══════════════════

Frankie wakes slowly the next morning, the kind of waking up that’s overly groggy and sticky, the kind you only get after sleeping on the couch for too long and after too much microwave food. He raises a hand to rub over his eyes, feeling the world carefully re-establish itself in his worn out brain when the morning light leaks through the curtains. He groans.

God, he shouldn’t have stayed up so late the night before. Thank goodness it’s Saturday, though. Mrs. Velásquez had been kind enough to give him an additional day off for his work on the drywall last Thursday, hence why he’s more than content to curl back up around the couch cushions and pretend the world doesn’t exist until at _least_ 1PM.

It’s just when he’s finally smushed his face into the pillow at _just_ the right angle for optimal comfort that his eyes shoot open once again.

Oh, _fuck_ , it’s _Saturday._

Which means Frankie’s got a lot more to worry about than how many hours of sleep his body wishes it could get.

“Shit,” he curses as he tries to get up in a hurry, nearly falling off the couch in his rush to look at the clock hanging on the adjacent kitchen divider.

_11:35 AM._

“Shit,” he curses again with a tenser tone, socked feet sliding uselessly on the wooden floors as he hurries to shove all his empty beer bottles and pizza boxes into the trash can. He makes a half-ditch effort at organizing the kitchen as best he can, practically throwing dishes and glasses and whatever else into the sink just to make it a little more presentable. However, when he cuts his finger on the open lid of a can of soup he ate once upon a time ago, he promptly declares that he _doesn’t have time for this shit._

He raises his bloody hands in surrender to the viscous pile of dirty dishes in the sink and shuffles his way towards his bedroom, where he all but throws open the dresser to look for a shirt that doesn’t reek of alcohol and marinara sauce. He shuffles through all his options frustratedly, destroying his careful folding in the process, until he finds a rumpled white one at the bottom that has certainly seen better days, but would definitely serve its purpose. He shoves the thing over his head while he kicks off his pants, digging through the drawers in the bathroom just to secure his toothbrush. He literally leaves the bathroom with the thing perched precariously in his mouth so he can tug a pair of jeans over his hips at the same time, trying not to gag at the overbearing mouthful of spearmint. 

Teeth brushed, pants on, shirt presentable, and hair more-or-less acceptable, he yanks his jacket off the hallway floor and shucks it on, stepping into his shoes while he fumbles with his car keys. 

Checking his watch as he goes, he breathes a sigh of relief seeing it’s only 11:50.

“Ten minutes,” he whispers to himself as he peels out of the parking lot and onto the neighboring street.

Thank god the place itself is close. Frankie doesn’t even want to imagine how much trouble he’d be in if he’d actually run late. Lord knows he couldn’t deal with that on top of all the other BS his mind’s been busy with as of late. He gets stuck at a few stop lights, impatiently tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and checking his watch every other minute just to quell his frantic worrying over the ticking hands. He steers himself into an open parking spot the second he sees one, putting the truck into park the second the hands hit 12:00 on the dot. He whispers a quiet _‘qué alivio’_ under his breath as he pushes the lock release and hops out. 

He locks the car, joining the growing congregation of people waiting around the entrance and sidewalks, chatting idly. He hangs back from the small pairs and groups that have started to form, settling comfortably under the shade of a large oak tree, shoving his hands in his pockets as he studies the sky curiously.

There’s not a hint of rain on the horizon, just the gentle swaying of clouds against the cobalt canvas, sun smiling eagerly down as usual, like its rays hadn’t been blocked out by the rolling thunder just hours before.

The turning of a lock sounds in the background and he returns his attention back to the moment at hand, straightening his hat on his head before he fixes the smallest smile he can muster on his lips. He walks forwards gently.

Kids come toddling out of the care center hand-in-hand, led by pairs of overly enthusiastic teachers and staff. However, as soon as the stairs and courtyard are cleared, tiny feet go scampering with equally tiny shouts while parents rush forward to welcome their children with open arms. 

He waits patiently with his fingers in his belt loops, scanning the crowd for a head full of tiny-curls or the young teacher that usually accompanied it. Sure enough, however, a resounding cry of _“Daddy!”_ comes from somewhere across the way, and before he knows it, he’s kneeling on the ground while his little girl all but jumps into his arms. 

“Rosa,” he greets in equal zeal, picking her up against his chest to spin her a few times in the air, tucking her head back against his shoulder when she squeals at him to stop, a fit of giggles following short after.

“Mi pequeña princesa,” _[my little princess]_ he murmurs against her cheek, peppering her face with kisses while she tries to clumsily do the same to him, “How was it today, baby? Did you learn a lot?”

“Te extrañe, papá” _[I missed you, daddy]_ she tells him with her fingers half-way in her mouth, fumbling over the consonants in that cute-way that only kids can manage. She throws her arms around his neck in another loose hug and he coos, loving how small her voice sounds when she talks to him.

“Te extrañe, también, princesa,” _[I missed you too, princess]_ he punctuates the words with another overexaggerated kiss to her cheek just to get her to smile again. However, when she gets fed up at the ticklish feeling of his mustache against her skin, she wiggles out of his grip, standing at his hip with two of his fingers in her cute, smaller grip.

“What do you want for lunch, baby?” He asks, as they walk back to the car, “Did mommy pack you anything?”

He gets her settled in her seat while she thinks and fumbles over a response, still grabbing at his clothes and laughing at the faces he makes, “Chicken nuggets, daddy!”

He chuckles at her excitement while he climbs into the driver’s seat; it’s been this way for months at this point. Every time he picks her up from daycare he asks what she wants to eat, and every time without fail, she says she wants chicken nuggets...and Frankie, having a soft spot in his heart shaped exactly like little Rosalia, takes her to get some every time without fail. 

And just like that, he lives in the moment for a few hours. 

He leads Rosalia by the hand into McDonalds while she rambles on and on about her day in some incomprehensible mix of Spanish, English, and baby-talk, but he nods along nonetheless. (He needs to remind himself to speak a little more Spanish with her when she’s around; her mom never quite picked it up, and Frankie’ll be damned before he lets her forget it).

She jumps and skips when he walks, grins up at him every time he offers a sentence in response, and by the time they’re next in line to order, she’s on her tip-toes to peer over the counter at the cashier, little sneakers looking so precious next to his dirty work boots. 

God, he loves her. 

And it’s easy to get lost in his adoration for her. Easy to forget that he spent the entirety of last night drinking and moping over something as silly as tailored suits or umbrellas, when his little girl was waiting for him just hours away--pink overalls, curly hair, and all, ready to tell him she loved him any second of the day.

He helps her eat her chicken nuggets in between bites of his own burger, using a napkin to wipe barbecue sauce off her face while she tries to push him away. He lets her feed him spoonfuls of her Oreo McFlurry, even when her hands are too smile to properly grip the spoon and vanilla ice cream gets stuck in his mustache. 

He watches with a careful eye as she walks towards the playground bustling with other kids, a shout of “quédate donde puedo verte” _[Stay where I can see you]_ to follow her.

And he gets lost in his task, watching his daughter climb all over the playground, running around with the other kids. There’s nothing on his mind other than how complete he feels with her at his side again, there to hold his hand and tell him she missed him when no one else would. Like the good little girl she is, she stays where he can see her the entire time they’re there, and even once they’ve left, he can’t help but peer back at her in the rearview mirror where she’s fallen asleep in her carseat.

He carries her into the apartment, gently laying her down in her designated room with a small kiss to her forehead and a whispered “Te quiero mucho, princesa.” _[I love you, princess]._

He shuts the door as quietly as he can a minute later, shuffling to the kitchen to see if he can’t put something decent together for dinner by the time 5:30 rolls around. Oddly enough, he’s entirely disconnected in this little bubble of happiness he’s created. It’s like Rosalia just brought something back to him, finally shoved the missing puzzle piece back into the place it belonged, where he doesn’t feel like he’s a jumbled mess or going to fall apart any second now.

He puts on a record in the background while he cooks, whispering along to the quiet lyrics while he dices up lettuce, onions, and tomatoes, slicing up some chicken to cook while he digs through the cabinets for a few bowls and plates. Even when Rosalia wakes up and noisily plays with her dolls on the living room floor, his mind is still empty, stuck in this limbo where nothing but the movement of his hands, the sounds of his daughter, and the music in the background exist.

(A limbo in which he can pretend _you_ never existed...one where he doesn’t have to think about how nice his hands would look around your waist, how kind you are to the staff, and how desperately he wants to cook tacos for you, too, just to see how much you’d love them).

Things are quiet, in a way, even through dinner. He manages to get Rosalia fed, even when she insists on sitting on his lap and eating off of _his_ plate instead of hers and smears a few drops of salsa on his shirt. He gets things cleaned up while she toddles about, always following her out the corner of his eye to make sure she doesn’t fall or get hurt when he’s not looking.

However, when 9 PM rolls around, that’s another story.

“Bedtime story! Bedtime story!” she chants as she plops down in bed, curly hair thoroughly brushed out and pink pajamas at the ready.

“Baby, it’s a little late for a bedtime story,” he says for what seems like the umpteenth time tonight, leaning against the door frame to make a quick escape the moment she’s down for the count, “Daddy’ll read you a bedtime story tomorrow. Es hora de dormir, okay, princesa?” _[It’s time to go to sleep, okay, princess?]_

“But daddy,” she whines with wide eyes, bunching her bed sheets up in her hands while she gives him _that_ look. That one _fucking_ look Frankie’s never been able to resist. He stares her down with a look of his own, but ultimately, she can keep the puppy eyes going much longer than Frankie can pretend to be stern.

God, he’s so weak.

He sighs with a slight smile, moving to sit down on the edge of her bed with his hands on his knees, “Which book?”

She sticks her hands up in the air, practically running down the hall to get her backpack. She’s carrying a tiny picture book in her hands when she comes back, gingerly handing the thing to Frankie while she gets settled back against her pillows. He thumbs the cover with a quirked brow.

 _The Knight and The Princess_...huh. Well, there certainly wasn’t a lot of creativity in that title, but it doesn’t look like he has much of a choice, does he? If his little girl wants to read the damn thing, then that’s what he’ll do.

He scoots up to lay against the headboard with her, meling the instant she curls against his chest to peer down at where his fingers open to the title page. Just for sake of being a good father, he uses his finger to show which words he’s reading, hoping one day she’ll be reading books to him instead of the other way around. 

“Once upon a time,” he begins with a sigh, speaking lowly. However, the minute the words are out of his mouth, Rosalia’s grinning with excitement, wiggling in his hold to get a closer look at the illustration of a princess on the next page. He goes through the story in abject boredom, looking at the pictures with an attitude that just screams ‘unimpressed,’ but Rosalia doesn’t seem to mind, hanging off of every word.

He really needs to have a talk with Monica about the books Rosa’s reading, because, _hell_ , if any daughter of Frankie Morales is wasting their time on something so void of content.

It’s entirely too cliche. The pretty princess at the top of the castle, completely impartial to any of the suitors her father introduces, until a traveling knight in shining armor comes into town. And, _of course_ , the princess decides the instant she sees him that he’s the one for her. The rest of the story is an awkward repetition of the king trying to sell silly-looking, goofy, or otherwise inadequate illustrated men off on his stubborn daughter, becoming increasingly tired as the story goes on.

At the very end, however, when the knight finally earns the king’s approval, a grand wedding follows. A picture of the princess in a snow-white wedding dress with her knight in shining armor standing by her side is illustrated on the final page. Rosalia’s blinking tiredly by the time he closes the book, stifling a yawn against his shirt as she tries to babble on about how beautiful the princess looked at the end of the story.

He smiles softly down at his daughter, gently maneuvering her to lay on her own while he goes to tuck the book back into her backpack. She’s just trailed off by the time he kisses her forehead and tucks her bedsheets up under her chin, making sure her night light is plugged in when he passes the outlet. 

Just when he’s shut off the light, though, a small voice is calling out to him.

“Daddy, do you think I’ll marry a knight one day?” she asks him, half asleep but eyes wide with concern and hope.

He leans against the door frame, licking his lips while he holds the damn book, fiddling with the cover to try and stall while he can. _She won’t marry a knight,_ he thinks as he looks at the floor beneath his feet, _never. It’s an impossibility._

Bitterness creeps up in his throat, even if it’s just the harmless questioning of a child who doesn’t know the scope of the world just yet. There’s a distaste in his mouth. Not for her, not for the question, but for the answer he’s about to give her.

“Of course you will, baby,” he whispers back with a fake smile, trying not to feel guilty when that earns him an immediate shining grin. He watches as she turns beneath the blankets, getting settled for the night, and suddenly he feels sick. His smile falls, even as he leaves with a small “dulces sueños, princesa.” _[Sweet dreams, princess.]_

And, like he had just shut the door on the sun itself, the room is suddenly full of rain clouds once again, hanging over his head and sticking in his lungs every time he moves to breathe. It’s not even because he’s just lied to his daughter--she probably won’t even remember his answer when she wakes up in the morning--but because it’s not just about _princesses_ and _knights._

It’s about the world. It’s about the unfairness, the stigma that follows him everywhere he goes, forever branded with the words _addict_ or _vet_ or something different but equally as demeaning.

It’s about _reality._

It’s about how he calls her princess, even though he knows she’ll never be one...even though he knows he’s the reason she couldn’t live like that. If he’d done what was right before, done what he could have to make the life he’d give to his daughter a little easier, maybe his answer would be different.

But it’s not like that. She’s not a princess-- _never will be_ \--and he’s certainly no king, as much as he wished he was the night before.

He sits on the couch, TV still flickering, yet his eyes won’t focus. When he thinks about it, though, the entire argument just begs the question: _Can a knight even marry a princess in the first place?_

I mean, sure, the story book proves it can happen, but the king in the story definitely wasn’t fucking happy about it. Hell, the entire interlude between the beginning and end centers on him trying to convince his daughter any other guy in the kingdom would serve her better than the knight.

And for as much shit as the king in the story gets for being the villain, maybe he wasn’t entirely wrong. Frankie sure as hell wouldn’t want any dirty, violent knight to touch his little princess with a single fingertip if he could help it. Just the thought has him raring.

(God, the first time Rosa brings a girl or boy back home he’s gonna blow a blood vessel).

But it makes sense when you think about it. The knight and princess are two seperate things. The princess being perfect, pretty, and important. The knight being the outlier, the enigma, the one person not important _enough._

In any way he can think of it, there’s no way in hell the knight should have been able to marry the princess. So, if that’s true, then why does the book end like it does?

Frankie’s ashamed to admit that he spends the rest of the night trying to figure it out. What’s even worse, he’s _still_ thinking about it when he’s making eggs and bacon for Rosa in the morning. And he _keeps_ thinking about it while driving to his mother’s house to drop Rosa off for the day while he goes to work.

It’s stupid and a little infuriating that a silly picture book like _The_ fucking _Knight and The Princess_ has had him questioning the meaning of life for well over 6 hours now (and it’s even more enraging that he can’t think of the answer yet).

He drives to The Chapman with white knuckles, grinding his teeth while his body seemingly moves on autopilot. God, his mind is a mess of half-made sentences and random words, everything he’s tried to convince himself of for the past day as well as everything he knew couldn’t be true.

It’s exhausting (and also a little humiliating that he can’t answer a one sentence question posed by a fucking picture book meant for babies. Guess he can tell why his SAT scores were so low now, _jesus christ)._

He pulls into the parking lot with a grimace, anger running through his veins as he asks himself once again, “can a princess marry a _fucking_ knight?”

_No._

It’s a knee-jerk response at this point. _No_ , a knight can’t marry a princess, despite what the media might tell you. Everyone wants to believe the world works in the favor of those who trust it, that the universe only wants what’s best for humanity, that knights _can_ marry princesses and that it’s just an obvious fact of life.

But of course it’s a little more complicated than that. Bone cancer in children? Drug wars in Miami? Genocide by the European power houses? Yeah, the universe isn’t _that_ kind.

And any ounce of kindness the world _does_ have certainly isn’t afforded to any stupid knight wishing on a star to one day marry a princess.

…. _But is it really like that? Or has he got it all wrong?_

He feels like his brain is going to explode.

It’s when he’s on the clock that he reaches his boiling point. He’s repainting the pool he’d been working on earlier that week, Mr. Kurokawa arranging heavy garden pots around the deck to be transplanted with caladium plants, when he finally spills his guts.

“Can a knight marry a princess?” he asks, too embarrassed to face the older man.

Kurokawa doesn’t even turn, just continues filling his pots with soil as he answers, “Why not?”

Frankie bites his cheek, dipping his brush into the can of paint once again before opening his mouth one more time, “‘Cause princesses are princesses and knights are...well, _knights_. They’re two totally different concepts; there’s no way it’d work.”

“And how are they different?” Mr. Kurokawa responds without missing a beat, voice completely calm. Frankie actually stops painting just to look up in disbelief at the man’s back from where he’s standing on the floor of the empty pool.

“Knights are...scoundrels,” he starts with a shake of his head, “Y’know, sure, they have that whole Chivalry Code of Honor to cover their asses, but just ‘cause you say ‘ladies first’ doesn’t mean you can hide all the blood and bullshit that sticks to your armor...It’s just the lay of the land. There’s no redemption for that.”

“And how does that change anything?”

A scoff, “you can’t tell me any princess would want to marry a guy who’s spent more time slicing through other people than actually talking to them...let alone one without any money. Think any king would let a guy from the village touch his daughter with a ten foot pole?” 

Frankie shakes his head another time with a vindictive smile, going back to his task of painting the pool, “Nah. They’d be six feet under before then.”

Mr. Kurokawa finally straightens up, pulling his gardening gloves off and staring down Frankie from under the brim of his sun hat, “And have you ever thought about how the princess would feel?”

Frankie opens his lips to respond, yet can’t find any words that would give Kurokawa the answer he was probably looking for.

He quirks an eyebrow, a clipped laugh following after when he sees the look on Frankie’s face, “Don’t look at me like that. C’mon, have you?”

Silence ensues, and Kurokawa nods. He turns back to his plants, walking over to the side of the deck to heft a carton of the caladium into his arms.

“See, son, you can go on about the knight all you want, but that doesn’t mean anything if you haven’t thought about the princess either,” he posits, all but immersing himself in his task as he slowly demolishes Frankie’s stupid roud-a-bout reasoning, “The knight might be a scoundrel, but the princess knows more than you think. Nobody’s gonna decide what the princess deserves except the princess herself. Not the king, not the knight--not anybody.”

Frankie drops his face at that, looking down at where his paintbrush continues to slowly drip paint onto the floor of the pool. 

Mr. Kurokawa continues, though.

“And if the princess decides that what she deserves is a knight, then that’s what she’ll have. That’s all there is to it.”

_That’s all there is to it?_

Somehow, a feeling that stirs in Frankie’s chest agrees with that, and he’s too tired of childish storybook fantasies to argue any longer.

══════════════════

When he gets back to the main janitorial floor that evening, Mrs. Velásquez greets him at the door with small shooing motions and a barely contained grin on her face. 

She leads him back to her office, off to the side of which stands a brand new ladder, still shiny with an orange paint coat and metal steps that lack the usual cover of dirt. Mrs. Velásquez claps him on the shoulder, shoving him towards the thing with hurried words, something about _the kindness of the new boss, how she cared more than Sullivans or Johnson ever did._

With a small smile on his face, hands running across a small note taped to one of the legs.

_“Now I won’t have to worry about you falling any longer :)”_

He crumbles the thing in his hands, smiling softly down at it in his hands.

He agrees with her without thinking twice.

══════════════════

That very week he stands on the new ladder, replacing light bulbs on one of the many conference floors. He’s grinning at the light fixtures for no other reason than that he is, Walkman strapped to his waistband, _Cali Pachanguero_ playing in his ears once again.

He’d been avoiding you. 

Not because he’s still reeling from the sight of you with that other man (not that he _isn’t_ , either, though), but because he’s embarrassed he’d overreacted so grossly to the entire situation. 

In fact, he’s still overreacting...At least now he can admit it.

He’s upset, unreasonably so, simply because he isn’t that other guy. He isn’t made of a million dollars; he doesn’t own a Motorola; he can't tie a tie with those complicated knots or slick his hair back without looking like a jackass. 

He’s upset he’s not a king. 

What’s more, he’s upset that the queen gave him hope, even when he’s sure she didn’t mean to.

But most of all, he’s upset at himself for being upset in the first place.

It’s a vicious cycle and Frankie’s only the latest victim.

So he’s spent the week avoiding you, ducking away through maintenance closets and alternate hallways just so he wouldn’t have to see the way you smile at him when you pass by, or hear the way you say his old rank like it was a compliment rather than an insult.

He misses you, sure, but it will be hard until it just isn’t.

And until he can stop viewing himself, you, and everyone else in this world as a collection of dollar signs instead of human beings, he’ll keep to himself (because _you_ , of all people, with your soft heart and kind way of speaking, don’t deserve that kind of disrespect).

Especially when you make him feel so… _good._

So lost is he in his thoughts that he doesn’t notice someone trying to get past him...that is, until they slap him rather harshly on the back, sending him wobbling on his feet where he stands on the ladder.

He tugs his headphones off in a hurry, turning as quick as his body will allow, half-expecting to see your face staring up at him when he turns back, that same smile his heart longs to see just waiting for him.

However, when he turns, his excitement drains quickly. Rather than your smaller figure, all that meets his eye is the burly form of a balding businessman, fat with too much alcohol and good food in his lifetime. He scowls up at Frankie with an intensity Frankie doesn’t believe he could mimic without sending himself to the hospital. 

If looks could kill, Frankie would have been a skeleton faster than anyone could utter the word ‘buzzkill.’

He goes wide-eyed at the sight of the man, then catches the sight of two or three shattered light bulbs under the man’s custom-made italian shoes. He stammers, pulling his hat from his head like it would somehow act as some sort of peace offering, if only to stave off the inevitable storm that was about to come.

“Sir, I--”

“Do you know how much these shoes cost?” the man starts out, jaw shifting as he gestures towards said shoes, volume raising with each word that exited his mouth, “They’re brand _fucking_ new, imported straight from Italy, paid for in-full with my own _fucking_ name on every goddamn check I signed for them.”

Frankie’s eyebrows raise, shoulders heightening defensively, knowing where this conversation is headed, “No, sir, I swear if the bulbs were--”

“You see those fucking scratches? That’s from _you_ , and your little fucking repairman sideshow. What kind of worker can’t even keep his work station clean?” The man scoffs, leaning in, and Frankie would have punched this man in the face if it wouldn’t have cost him his job and probably his life too.

“Lemme tell you what kind of worker that is,” he continues, taking advantage of Frankie’s lack of a response, “One not worth being paid.”

The man is practically sharing the same air as Frankie now, staring him straight down the face, sizing him up, as if Frankie didn’t have the training and ire to lay him flat right now if he wanted to right now.

The man’s eyes drop, suddenly, staring down at the little stitched name-tag that was velcroed to the front of his jumpsuit; they’re back in less than a second.

“So watch yourself, _Francisco,_ ” he mocks with a terrible accent, about two-second away from spitting at Frankie’s feet.

Luckily, however, the small clearing of a throat saves him.

Both of the men turn to stare down at whoever made the noise, only to come face to face with the person he was both hoping and dreading he’d see today.

_You._

Frankie just stares at you for a second or two, taking in the way your arms are crossed and a grimace is on your usually sunny face. When your gaze meets his, however, he turns away as fast as he can, unwilling to meet your eye.

What greets him when he shifts his vision, though, is utterly amusing. 

The man who’d been seething and drooling just seconds before has now gone paler than a ghost, expression one of either shock or fear (maybe _both_ ) at the sight of your small frame blocking the end of the hall.

You take a few steps forwards, heels clacking with every movement, and instantly, the man is straightening up and moving away from Frankie without another word.

“Stevenson,” you call him tersely, staring him down with a look that Frankie would hate to be on the receiving end of, “You wanna explain to me what’s going on here?”

The man stutters, tossing his briefcase back and forth in his hands, like the movement might somehow hide the guilty look in his eyes, “Well--ma’am, we were just talking, really.”

You nod your head with a scornful purse of your lips, faking sympathy, “Yeah, because that’s exactly what it looked like.”

“Ma’am, I swear that I--”

“ _Leave_ , Stevenson, don’t make me tell you twice,” you interrupt, jutting out your chin, “Unless you think I can’t find another advisor who’d be dying to work at The Chapman.

And even standing shorter, smaller, and overall, tinier than both Stevenson or Frankie, he’s never seen anyone more intimidated by a simple gesture than when you jerk your head towards the elevator, a silent command for obedience.

And just like that, Stevenson is scurrying towards the elevators with his tail in between his legs, looking thoroughly chastised when he throws Frankie a loathing gaze over his shoulder.

For as much as the show was entertaining (and for as glad as Frankie is for your intervention), the silence that follows is anything if not uncomfortable.

Frankie can feel it hanging heavy between the two of you, thick and soaked through with an awkwardness he knows can’t be ignored. For a long while, you both stand there, just watching the empty hallway…

Until, “I still owe you that drink, don’t I?”

And without thinking, “Yeah, I think you do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT UPDATE: MONDAY, MARCH 8; 2021
> 
> My Tumblr: [slater-baby](https://slater-baby.tumblr.com)


	5. Chapter 4: Lo Que Quieres Decir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There were too many differences between you and him. They stood out like sore thumbs amidst the surprisingly cavalier relationship you’d created with him, and they were just begging to be picked at. However, what matters more than the answer you give him is everything you choose _not_ to say afterwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHHHH HELLO!!! once again I was super busy this week so both of the High Rises are being updated today djalkjdfljal its rough. However!! These two chapters are gonna be pretty long!! Both are gonna be around 9k each, so I hope you'll enjoy them!! As always this was originally posted on my Tumblr (linked below), so if you wanna get ahead of the curve, make sure to check me out there too!! I hope you all started your week fantastically!! 
> 
> My Tumblr: [slater-baby](https://slater-baby.tumblr.com)

The hotel was always strangely dim after hours. It probably had something to do with the way most guests were safely tucked into their silk sheets by this hour, but the lights always seemed lower, just barely glinting in the mirrored accents of the lobby and hallways. It amazed Frankie in some weird, underwhelming way, how dark every corner was, or how empty the normally bustling restaurants looked without their noisy company.

He follows you without words, merely studying the way you look almost as tired as he feels, shoulders not held as high as he was used to seeing them, feet slower in those heels you’d never let hold you back before. He doesn’t comment, however, just shuffles quietly behind you, biting his lips as he tried to figure out where this night is going.

 _Not anywhere good_ , he couldn’t help but think--and for good reason, too. No steady encounter would start with shattered light bulbs and a near fist fight, much less weeks of one-sided avoidance and stupid jealousy on his part. He watches the door numbers fly past, the deserted bay and bright lights of a waiting elevator greeting the two of you at the end of the hall.

He leans awkwardly against the wall with his legs crossed as you hold yourself up against the bar railing, fiddling with the buttons on your blouse. Both of you refuse to look the other in the eye, so he chooses to close them instead, letting his head fall back against the wall, entirely blind to the blaring fluorescents he knows would burn his vision any other time.

 _It’s coming_ , a voice in his head rings out, somber and reluctant, stiff with that underlying message of inevitability he’d been staving off for days now.

The elevator dings, a red 13 staring back at him from the display on the corner of the wall. You hardly spare him a second glance before you’re walking away, trusting that he’d follow, even when he’s sure you can tell he doesn’t want to. And just like always, he’s powerless but to trail after you, scoping out the spacious anteroom between a circle of about three or four restaurants, all of which have their pristine glass doors shut and locked by this hour.

The sound of your heels against the marble floors resounds throughout the lonely space while you walk up to one of the few doors there are to choose from, pulling a key seemingly out of nowhere and clumsily fitting it to the keyway. You tug the door open with a slight shuttering of its glass panes, standing with a straight back and pursed lips, just waiting for him to walk ahead of you.

With a small sigh, he does just that, shoving his hands in his pockets as he goes.

And as always, The Chapman didn’t skimp on any unnecessary expenses. 

The lighting is pitifully weak, holding way to a romantic, red-trimmed atmosphere shrouded in the usual brooding tones you’d expect out of any place that ran more on alcohol than good conversation. On one end lies the bar, stocked wall to wall with high-end spirits of all kinds, luxurious leather barstools perfectly lined up at an equally spotless counter. His boots thump softly against the carpet floor, navigating the complicated array of dining tables and chairs, marveling at the way silent dread continues to seep into his skin for every second longer he spends mulling over your singular presence behind him--how cornered he is in this empty, closed restaurant.

He can distantly hear the sound of the door closing behind you, your shoes near silent now that the padding of carpet is there to undermine their authority. He watches from the corner of his eyes as you walk behind the bar, running your fingers across the assortment of bottles before stilling on a particularly handsome neck of whiskey, pulling it off the shelf without a moment’s hesitation.

He settles himself atop one of the bar stools while you pour a couple measures, having not even asked if he’d liked whiskey in the first place. Maybe he just looks like he does. Or, maybe it just looks like he needs it. However, when you carelessly fling your blazer over the back of the barstool next to his, he thinks that maybe it’s just to serve the both of you good.

He’s not the only one who had a shitty day, from the looks of it.

Before you make your way back to the bar, though, you reach into the unbuttoned top of your blouse, hands returning with a crushed and nearly-empty pack of Lucky Strikes. You quirk an eyebrow in his direction, and while normally the look of you reaching into your own bra would have sparked something within him, he’s too exhausted to think of anything more than the mind-numbing push of nicotine.

He reaches a hand in your direction and you mutely press a cigarette between his fingers. He fixes it between his lips, leaning across the bartop to catch the flame of your battered zippo lighter. His first breath of smoke is punctuated by the click of the lighter cap, ash filling out his lungs and curling deep in his throat.

He puffs liberally while you stack an ashtray, two glasses, and the spare bottle in your arms, hauling them atop the counter before plucking a smoke of your own from the box.

And for a few seconds there, he gets to enjoy the quiet,  
sublime look of your lipstick against the filter as you push the glass towards him.

He reluctantly picks it up, vapor clouding his vision as he surveys the liquid in the glass. His eyes run lines between the bottle, you, and the cup in his hands, before he lowers it to the counter with a pointed shift of his gaze, leaning his elbow on the bartop while his other hand moves to pull the cigarette from his mouth.

He isn’t even looking at you, yet he knows it’s coming. He’s been expecting it for a while now, and with the way a mere pin drop could shatter the trance the two of you have somehow created, there’s no escaping the noiseless explosion your words will undoubtedly bring.

He sees the smoke from your mouth filter into the air and he braces himself.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

As expected, the words cut into him like knives, hardly a question more than it is just an obvious fact. He huffs with a guilty smile, something akin to resentment bubbling up inside of him when he taps the ash from his cigarette into the tray.

He peeks a glance at your face, your expression impassive as you watch him take another drag. The curve of your lips is impatient, though, and he can only ignore you for so long before it starts to take a toll on his body too.

He inhales deeply, letting the chemicals and spite run their course before he opens his mouth once again.

“If you want me to pretend like I had some good excuse for doing that, you’re not gonna get it,” he spits before he can regret his word choice. 

Amazingly, you don’t flinch or push him away; you don’t recoil in shock. If anything, you just become more indifferent, the tip of your smoke lighting orange on another inhale. And for as stiff and poisonous as the air has been since you intervened not twenty minutes ago, what he says is only the truth.

Did he have any good reason to give you the cold shoulder? Of course not.

Did he do it anyway? Of course he did.

He’s not going to lie to you in some half-witted bid to save whatever feelings you might have for him. That’s just not how he does things. He can be shy or closed-off when the situation calls for it, but in equal measure, there’s a directness he’d never forsake you.

You, who deserved his bitter honesty, even if it hurt the both of you. 

“So?” you mumble, reaching for your glass.

“So what?” he continues sharply, still ignoring his own drink.

“What now?”

He turns at that, staring into the mirrored backing of the backsplash rather than at you, where your rising challenge and palpable irritation radiate from beside him.

“We move on,” he decides swiftly with another drag, tilting his head away from you to exhale.

You scoff.

“Do we?”

He nods, but still refuses to meet your eye, ashtray steadily collecting the evidence of his own stress. The mood flares with scarlet, something aggressive and uncomfortable flowing between the two of you, and he’ll admit he deserves it just for that comment alone.

“Yeah,” he answers, to which you shake your head disapprovingly.

He bites his cheek as he surveys the tired line of your shoulders, forehead leaning into your free palm while you stick the cigarette back between your lips, stray ashes gathering on that skirt he knew had to cost well over two-hundred dollars.

It’s a jarring sight, the way you look so jilted in your seat, offset by his prickly attitude.

Never does he feel more humiliated than he does sitting there at the bar with you, smoking your shit and ignoring the whiskey you’d poured him, insulting the kindness you’d given him up until now, just because of a 10 second glance he’d had of you with another man.

How immature. How irrational, insolent, and insufferable it is that he’d forced you both into this situation, where he’ll either admit he’s a possessive bastard or you’ll admit you find his attitude intolerable.

“Why?”

The question is unexpected, to say the least. He’d been expecting something more akin to a slap across the face--not that the inquiry is any less brutal--but it has him pausing. A mirthful laugh escapes his lips before he can stop himself.

“Do you really have to ask me that?” another drag, another blow of smoke, “You know why. Don’t act like it isn’t obvious.”

You lower your glass suddenly, leaning in slightly, like just the sound of the words themselves offended you.

“If this is about what I think it is, you really don’t--”

“It is,” he interrupts with bruising finality, smoke escaping his lips with the declaration, head pointed towards the ceiling rather than anywhere meaningful, “It’s about exactly what you think it’s about--and don’t even try that stupid ‘money’s nothing compared to happiness’ lecture I know you’re about to give; I’ve heard it a thousand _fucking_ times, and I don’t deserve that kind of disrespect from you. You know I don’t.”

He’s never cussed in front of you before, and he hates the way your eyes go wide at his tone. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think he was scaring you. However, he can’t find it in himself to regret it, soaking up the anger and emotion he knew wasn’t justified, letting his feelings boil over the top, even when they’re humiliating in equal measure.

“Francisco,” you start with a hearty pause, saying his name in a quiet tone that had pins and needles brushing over his skin, “you know I don’t mean it like that.”

“Are you sure I do?” he fires back just for the sake of arguing.

“Of course you do,” you say assuredly, like you actually believed it, “You just don’t wanna admit it.”

He huffs, smirking derisively over his cigarette, “So, what, is this the part where you say I’m not so different from you after all?”

Your jaw unhinges, like you’d wanted to speak but you swallowed your tongue before the sounds could form. Your fingers fidget where they lie in your lap, yet you still turn your barstool decisively towards him, lifting your gaze just to meet his eyes, even when he can see the intimidation swimming in your pupils.

“The only difference between you and me are the things between our legs.”

He can’t help but laugh at that, shaking his head with another tap against the edge of the ashtray.

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He can taste the soreness in your turn of phrase, the short tone of your voice sticking needles in his heart with the way it hits him head on. He barely waits for you to finish your sentence before he’s interjecting, violently turning his barstool to face yours with a scathing look in the set of his brows.

“It means you have a phone that costs $4000 dollars and I can barely buy my daughter a Barbie doll when she wants one.”

He sees the fear and hurt bleed into your face slowly after that one, something eerily similar to doubt crawling up the plains of your face, like you’d been so genuine up until then, only to have your entire perception ruined by just a few words. He hates the way you curl into yourself at what he says, how your body shrinks when you’re usually so confident, always the center of attention and the anchor in the room.

He doesn’t even know what came over himself.

One minute, he was shying away from your scornful gaze as you watched him nearly get pummeled in the middle of the hallway, grateful and anxious all the same at your quiet intervention.

But the minute he’d stepped into the restaurant, it’s like his vision had taken the same properties as the heavy atmosphere: it’d gone red around the edges and hazy in the middle.

Maybe it’s just because he’s been housing these insecurities for way too long now, or maybe it’s just because you’re the placeholder for everything he used to despise, but he just can’t hold it back any longer.

He needs to get it off his chest.

But he’d never meant to hurt you. That, he’d never meant to do.

“M’sorry, I just….” he begins softly, eyebrows losing their previous furrow in exchange for a watery look of apology.

He swallows tersely, gathering his thoughts before he’ll say something he regrets once again, “I’m just tired of pretending I didn’t wish I had everything people like you have.”

“Really?”

His face lights up in a sad smile at that, a genuine chuckle following less than a second after, “You tryna pull one over my head right now?” he gestures with his burning cig, “if you want me to admit I’m jealous, all you have to do is ask.”

You shake your head innocently, looking more like an unsure little girl than the hardened business woman you usually are, “No, I mean, is that really how you see me?”

He scrunches his brow.

“How I see you?”

You shift uncomfortably in your seat, cigarette left forgotten where it lays in the ashtray. You start carefully, but there’s an accusation lying beneath your question, “Like I’ve got more than you have?”

“Don’t you?” he asks without restraint, sincere and entirely serious.

You take a small sip, clutching your glass in both hands.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” you parrot back, which earns you a reluctant grin.

He laughs, finally reaching for his own glass, “like hell you don’t.”

His heart flutters when you return his quip with a few of your own giggles, leaning further in, even when he’d had you paralyzed just seconds before.

“I’m being serious,” you beg with a needy, high pitch.

“Yeah?” he takes a sip, “then what is it I have that you don’t?”

“A family.”

And just like the rug had been pulled out from under him, the smile he’d been wearing falls in an instant. The light air that had been briefly restored crashes down on him like a bunch of bricks, jaw stiff and unmoving when he tries to come up with a response that wouldn’t get him fired on the spot.

He clears his throat slightly, grinding his teeth while he stares down a pair of wine glasses behind the bar, just to find something to do with his eyes. He hadn’t been expecting the frankness--let alone the viscous way you’d presented it to him, a purposeful trap you’d set just to pull him off his high horse.

He’d been so caught up in his own emotion, in the stupid little show of indignance he’d been putting on, that he’d forgotten you’d had your own say in the matter, too. Even though you were the more obvious breadwinner of the two of yourselves, he’d never considered the fact that maybe you’d have felt the same sort of disconnection he had, the same sort of jealousy he’d been feeding for weeks now. 

When he speaks, it’s barely above a whisper.

“M’sorry, I didn’t mean--”

“It’s fine,” you interrupt, though, your voice is weaker than he’s sure you’d wanted it to sound.

And with that, the two of you sit in a stiff silence. You take a final drag from your smoke before you gently stub it out. Frankie just lets the ash pile up on the tip of his, eyes glazed over and facing forward in deep contemplation. And that continues for several minutes, cigarette smoke burning his eyes with small sips of whiskey in between to soothe his aching throat. You pick at the stockings under your skirt, not saying a word to him, while he does just the same.

There’s no spite left anymore. No bitterness, no frustration. His short temper has all but fizzled out, substituted for a sinking sort of solemnity that replaces his heart with a black hole, slowly sucking up all the thoughts, feelings, and excuses he’d had just seconds before.

“Frankie?” you call out after a while, voice so high and soft in the silent, closed barspace.

He’s so lost in his own descent he doesn’t even register the fact you said his nickname rather than his given one.

“Yeah?”

You swallow, hands never stilling; it’s just a physical representation of your nervousness.

“Is that really how you see me?” you ask him for a second time, and this time, he sucks in a breath.

No. No, that’s not how he sees you. You’re so much more than your bank account or worldly possessions, just like he’s more than his drug problems or his time in Vietnam. You’re the brightness of a Californian sunrise, understated beneath the cover of towering high rises and deceiving luxury, yet captivating from any angle, where your warmth seeps out of the edges of the facade you’ve given yourself. You’re the lightness he felt a few weeks ago, smiling dumbly into a broken mirror. You’re the silly songs on his Walkman and the looseness that came with mid-morning mimosas.

You’re the thing he’s missing, yet simultaneously, the representation of everything he wishes he could have, but knows he’d never be worthy of.

“No,” he croaks in a quiet panic, shaking his head like it’d help him decide how to answer the question.

“No, you’re so much…” he starts, only to trail off. His tongue sticks to the top of his mouth for a few seconds, throat suddenly all too dry, despite the near full glass of whiskey still sitting in front of him. 

His heart rate picks up, eyes falling from the place they hold yours.

“You’re just you,” he eventually decides, the syllables themselves small and insignificant against the heavy feeling that had been building between the two of you since the second you started this conversation.

He can’t look you in the face, pulling his cigarette back between his lips, hoping the nicotine would calm the incessant beating of his heart and immediate flushing of his face. Yet, while his mind bends underneath the chemicals, whiskey, and smoke, the sensation of something else manages to leak through the cracks.

It’s mellow, tender, and light against his skin.

It’s the feeling of your fingers tracing the lines of his rough knuckles. His head rocks back upwards.

“You mean that, right?” you ask him--and if he hadn’t been wholeheartedly distracted by the look of your palm in his own, maybe he’d have seen the water welling up in your eyes.

“Of course,” he answers without thinking twice, voice so low it’s barely audible.

It’s then that something unexplainable passes between the two of you, pupils locked and unblinking, yet bodies completely frozen. You don’t move from your spot, and he can’t manage to detach his vision from you either, like you’d disappear if he so much as turned away for too long.

He can feel it now, that burning, aching pulse in his chest, the kind you only get when you’re sickeningly close to the edge of some sort of precipice, but don’t quite know whether you want to make the leap just yet. And even then, what awaits him off the edge of the cliff? In the bowels of the valley?

The chiming of a clock jolts you both out of your reverie, and faster than light, your hand is pulling away, body leaning back into your chair, putting as much distance between the two of you as you can manage on such short notice. Frankie reluctantly reels himself in, wiping his palms against his trousers as he tries to breath around the lump in his throat, face heating up when he stoically looks away, like it’d be improper to perceive you in this moment.

A long few seconds pass, silent words spinning circles in the overhanging cloud of tension that’s formed above your heads.

He clears his throat.

“Then what about me?” he says before he can think better of himself, still looking at his lap rather than at you. 

“What about you?” you question, voice wavering with your own sort of anxiety.

He fidgets.

“How do you see _me?”_

The moment the words are out of his mouth, he’s praying you understand what he means when he says it, wishing to every higher power he can think of that you won’t force him to drag this out any longer, because it’s getting to him now, and the blurred lines have never looked more enticing.

Your eyelids flutter for a second there, and maybe he’s mistaken, but he swears your pupils lingered on his lips just a little longer than necessary.

“I see you for you,” you reply, locking your sights onto his shrinking frame, confident yet hesitant all the same.

He nods his head like he understands, taking your words for what they’re worth.

But that’s not the answer he was looking for, and you both know it.

══════════════════

After that night in the restaurant, things continue on like they normally do. Frankie goes back to fixing up windows and painting empty pools, while you spend your days doing paperwork and other innocuous things that seem so simple, yet seem entirely too complicated all the same. You continue your rounds around the hotel, meeting and greeting every person who’d grant you the time of day (which was just about anybody lurking in the hallways; the staff has all but fallen for you since you took the job about two month ago today).

Frankie doesn’t make an effort to avoid you any longer. After the chat you’d had, clean air hangs between the two of you, but there’s a quiet buzzing between his recollections of you that he can’t quite identify. It’s like every time he sees you, usually from afar as you’re locked in joyful conversation with whoever had your attention that day, his body thrums weakly, pinpricks akin to nervousness running up his spine. He doesn’t have a name for it yet, and he doesn’t think he could give it one either, even if he wanted to. It’s just strange.

The air was clear, no longer did cloudy skies or gray tones follow him around. But even if the bad blood had long since dispersed, the space between him and you was eerily empty, lacking the frills it’d had before, and had simply become...unfilled space.

There was nothing there, yet at the same time, something else had begun to grow. It’s something invisible and light, something easy to miss unless you were looking for it in the first place. Maybe it’s something unacknowledged rather than nonexistent, though, because he can feel it physically in his chest, where it shoves aside his heart and lungs, lodging itself inside his ribcage, just to make it that much harder to breathe every time he catches your eye.

It’s like static is charging the air, making every nerve in his body stand on end when you meet his gaze or greet him in the halls. It’s stiff and cautious, but not uncomfortable like it was before. It was hopeful, a new beginning, with all the shaky legs and left feet to go along with it. He can see it in your face, too, that one emotion he can’t name displayed perfectly in your eyes every time you pass by. 

It’s nothing like it was before, but he can’t seem to mind it either. On some weird level, though, he almost enjoys it. His heart picks up with the tension in the air, vision hardly willing to focus on you for longer than a second at a time, mind blanking with white noise, and he likes it. 

Yeah, he likes it.

However, just because there’s a fresh breath of air in his lungs doesn’t mean that he’s moved past that talk in the restaurant bar. The two of you never mention the way you’d nearly held his hand that night. He never says thank you for the free cigarettes or whiskey. You never acknowledge the double sided question he’d thrown out on a whim that night. 

And, of course, he never asks what you meant when you’d replied. 

But, for as much as that night follows the two of you around the hotel like a spectre, more questions than answers on his mind, there goes an unsaid understanding now.

It’s like you just… _get each other_.

He holds the door open for you if you’re passing by his work area, and you never say thank you. Instead, you just smile shyly at him with downturned eyes. Every time he comes up to fix things on the higher floors, you hand him a drink without even asking first, shoving a pair of cigarettes into his breast pocket on the harder days, when you know he needs them but is too proud to admit it. He never thanks you either. He just hangs around the office a little longer afterwards, drinking mimosas or wine or whatever you’re feeling that day, clipped conversation flowing while that same unknown, electric feeling looms in the background. 

He carries a lighter now that he knows you have a bad habit of forgetting your own. You make a point of dropping off batteries at the janitorial office when you know he’s been draining the life on his Walkman. You sometimes sit quietly next to him while he goes about his chores around the hotel, ignoring the work he’s sure you have piling up.

He never makes an effort to remind you to do it.

It’s wordless and easy. He can tell just by the way you look what kind of day you’re having, and he’s sure you can do the same to him. It’s like you can pick him apart using just your eyes alone. But for as much as he’s comfortable letting you see through his body and into his mind, it’s a prison just as much as it is a luxury.

Where there were sporadic interactions before, there’s now a chained routine where you both circle around the other, pretending like what you meant to say that night isn’t a firmly established understanding the both of you already had.

But if someone had asked him what your answer would have been that night if you’d have recognized the second-meaning he’d hidden therein, he wouldn’t be able to tell them what it’d be. It’s elusive like that, frustrating yet titillating all the same.

There’s something building in that empty lot your conversation had left, and the both of you know it, even when you pretend not to see it.

Now the question becomes: where is the breaking point? Is it coming up? Is it far off in the future? Is there even a breaking point at all? Is he stupid to think there might be one?

Probably.

But maybe not. 

It’s complicated.

It’s the naturality of your relationship that follows though, that has him second-guessing himself. The way you can tell what he’s thinking before he even says it, how you’ll pour him more than one whiskey sour just because you know he’s craving it. It’s like your roots are interconnected, gently cradling each other under the cover of the soil, where the trees above are entirely oblivious to the complicated way they interact.

He feeds off of the trust you silently have for him. It’s in the way you listen without question when he tells you to step back if he’s working with something dangerous, always hearing the muted concern he hides in his voice. It’s how you throw him the keys to different rooms around the hotel, never questioning whether or not he’d return them afterwards.

You have a system, one that works like oiled gears: understated, normal, and efficient.

At this point in his career, it’s weird to think he knows you better than any of his own coworkers. Not because you’ve had any deep conversations or heartbreaking fights, but because he inherently just _does_. He can feel your emotions even standing a foot away from you, can pick apart the look on your face and mirror it right back with an insanely low percentage of error.

It’s the simple way you function together--always in motion, in your own closed circuit--that worries him. Is this all that’s in store for him? A satisfying, painless transaction of convenience that’s doomed to continue until the day he leaves this godforsaken hotel?

_Is this it?_

It’s the question that’s been running around his mind for weeks, settling in his stomach and heart, poking at his shoulders, just begging him to give the thought even an ounce of weight. 

And when he finally _does_ , their torment of his body just becomes _that_ much more insufferable. The words had since climbed their way into his throat, and then a few days later, into his mouth. And before he could even distinguish their taste on his taste buds, they were hanging on the tip of his tongue, just waiting to be said.

And that’s when he intentionally grinds the gears of your perfect time loop.

He’s installing a new thermostat in one of the lobbies on the higher floors, while you lounge in one of the leather chairs situated behind him. When you’d seen him working, you’d hardly wasted a second in bugging him. You’d simply come right up to him, a very quiet, almost unnoticeable greeting spoken towards him, before you went about digging through his overflowing toolbox. Like always.

He smiles with amusement every time you do it, though, you’d never know, considering you were alway singularly focused on the task at hand, too enraptured to spare a glance at his face. He watched as you straightened up with a small noise of victory, clutching his walkman and _Grupo Niche_ tape in your hands while you retreated to the lounge area.

It’d been like that the past few times he was working. You’d steal his Walkman from his toolbox if he wasn’t using it, only to sit serenely while he continued to work next to you, trying to whisper the foreign words on the tape front and the lyrics of the songs to yourself, despite butchering them completely.

Usually, he found it endearing, a little tiny link to that promise he’d had yet to keep. Even if the stiff stature of your system held him back from properly teaching you Spanish, you still had the mind to try your best, even if you hardly had a clue what you were doing.

He liked the way you screwed up the ‘r’ sounds, he liked the way your teeth stuttered over the unfamiliar words, and how your accent shone through on the ones he knew you recognized.

But today, he’s holding himself back, trying not to let all the frustration and questions he’s been driving himself crazy with fall out of his mouth before he has a chance to stop them. He’s onto his last straw, two seconds away from exploding, letting the wall see his scowl and shaking hands rather than you, who’s slumped over and pouring over the mixtape with wide eyes and pink cheeks.

“‘Permita que me….arpenta?’” you whisper under your breath, voice hitching up just slightly on the syllables your mouth struggled to curve around.

And it’s at that, that he cracks. 

He drops his screwdriver with a clang, exhaling probably a little too loudly, but to be fair, you hardly look up. You just continue to stumble your way through the unfamiliar lyrics, blind to the way Frankie’s storming up to you, posture strong and stance intimidating, moving to stand in front of you with a flat expression on his face.

That’s when you trail off and slowly look up, your styled hair falling out of your eyes where you have to tilt your head up to meet his face. He looms over you with his height, cornering you like you cornered him that day in the restaurant.

You pull the headphones off your head slowly, unsure, as you scan the look he’s giving you.

“...Frankie?” you mutter unknowingly hitting the last button on his body there was to push.

He leans forward, steadying himself with two hands against the arms of the chair, caging you in, so your head tips back against the backrest while you try to hold his gaze. He pries the tape from your hands, his rough fingertips grazing your manicured ones at the movement, and you go still underneath his shadow.

“Permita que me _arrepienta_ ,” he says lowly, putting extra emphasis on the syllables you missed. He can physically see the way his display has you shrinking with surprise, unblinking as you try to decipher the stare he’s giving you.

Because it’s not an expression of affection. Hardly.

It’s a _demand_. It’s a sentence of its own--a _question_ to be precise, brash and crass with its sudden and loud appearance.

 _Is this it?_ He asks you with his gesture, still leaning over you, holding the tape away from you, just so that you’re forced to answer to the intimidating way his figure engulfs you.

You remain silent, cheeks a little warmer than before, uncertain of what to say.

“Repeat it,” he commands, equally as firm.

And then, it’s like you’ve suddenly remembered you’ve got a tongue. Your gaze falls to your lap, mouth opening and closing as you try to parrot his own words back at him.

“Permita que me a-arre--”

“ _Arrepienta_ ,” he repeats again harshly, “C’mon, say it.”

“--Permita que me arrepienta,” you manage softly, words garbled as you hurriedly try to comply with the unsaid ultimatum.

He nods his head resolutely, pushing off of the chair to give you a little room to breathe now that he’s got the answer he was looking for.

It’s hidden in the way you watch his shoulders sway with his retreat, the way your gaze lingers on him long after he goes back to screwing in the thermostat cover, but it’s there all the same.

_No. This isn’t it._

══════════════════

And the system breaks.

There’s no more seamless back and forths, conversations without incident, or times you see him when he isn’t reminded that there’s something between the two of you--that empty space suddenly having been filled with sparks and the natural heat that came with live electricity.

It’s a little dangerous, a little distracting, and a little exasperating all at once, like you’d broken through the past barriers, but were still circling him, just with an even tighter rotation.

He struggles to keep up with it, struggles to keep his eyes on you, where you’ve suddenly gone from subdued and tense, to confident and enthusiastic all in one week. You’ve been poking your head into his work more often, filling your days with him rather than the paperwork and responsibilities he knows plague you normally.

At this point, he’s a little worried The Chapman’s going to go under, what with how often its boss was slacking off to bug some no-name repairman in janitorial services, rather than doing her work.

He hardly minds it, though--it’d be criminal if he did. 

It’s back to that same freedom and lightness he’d let himself get carried away with before that conversation in the bar, butterflies filling his chest and stomach every time you talk to him, entirely candid with him now that the unpleasant words are out of the way.

He can see it in your eyes, and he knows you can see it in his, too.

Things are better, even though you still haven’t told him what you meant yet. He knows you’re not telling him the whole truth, though, which is more than enough for now.

Even if it’s not a promise, he knows you don’t just ‘see him for him.’

How you _do_ see him, though...That’s still up for debate, and that notion alone has him smirking proudly in the mirror each morning, putting a little more effort into his hair when he’s getting ready for work, finally using that cologne his mother gave him way too long ago. 

You talk to him like he’s an old friend, standing a little closer than you used to, actually saying the lyrics to his songs aloud rather than mumbling them to yourself, waiting for his patient corrections.

You even let him rib on you a little bit, if you’re in the right mood, and his chest puffs up every time he remembers how you’d take no shit from anyone else in this goddamned high rise. 

It’s just him, and now he knows rather than feels that he’s special, unspoken agreements just underlining the fact. Even during the rare times he’s not dealing with your incessant presence (which he really doesn’t mind, as much as he complains about it to you, just to watch your cheeks puff up in fake anger), he can feel the air thick with something else.

That one taste he’s had in his mouth for a couple weeks now--the one that’s slowly become almost annoyingly palpable in every room the two of you occupy together--lingers beneath every word you throw his way and every laugh he earns from your smiling mouth.

God, it’s never been better.

It’s another sunny day in Los Angeles, the heat beating down in long waves as he trudges along the edge of the deck where the pool meets the sandy bay of the beach. It’s sweltering, but he hasn’t got a choice but to work outside today, since he’s assembling a couple new pergolas for the lounge area a couple yards over, which requires a little more space than a single meagre hallway or lobby.

The speakers from the outdoor café blare with Billy Squier, and he can see several patrons across the way, already up and dancing to the beat despite it just barely being 11 AM. He smiles at the sight, tugging his hat off his head to try and fruitlessly wipe the sweat off his forehead, throwing the thing down off to the side of the wood he’s currently working with when it becomes apparent the wind will protect him from the heat better than his hat ever could.

He clears his throat as he kneels next to the pergolas, sliding a pair of sunglasses over his eyes before reaching back for his screwdriver, having to twist where he kneels to get a good grip on the thing.

It’s just when he’s about to straighten up that he sees something that piques his curiosity. There, off to the side of the covered seating and adjacent pool, is a circular table, every seat around the thing occupied by one person or another, laughing loudly with glasses of champagne in their hands.

But that’s not what interests him. Rather, it’s the sight of you within the circle, sitting straight with all the air of assuredness and competence he knows a businesswoman like you could never function without. He gapes dumbly for a second, just staring at you over his sunglasses, watching with bated breath as you lift a fork to your mouth, cheerily responding to whatever the woman sitting next to you has to say.

He really can’t tell whether or not you’d even be able to see him where he kneels, assembling the pergolas, but something inside of him snaps at the thought that you _might_. He hazily turns back to the wood pieces scattered around his form, screws and nails off to one side, where they eagerly await his masterful process, but his thoughts are spiraling too much to reach for them.

‘You _should_ be able to see him, shouldn’t you?’ He thinks dumbly, chewing on the side of his cheeks as he debates over what he’s about to do.

‘You _should_ be able to see him,’ a voice in his head reaffirms, and before he can think twice, he’s standing once again.

Skin blazing, mind positively _reeling_ , he reaches for the hem of his tank top, making a show of swiftly pulling it over his head, before he throws it to the ground. When he’d left the military after his conscription, he’d been in top shape, with cut abs and sharp hip bones. Years later, he was a little softer around the edges, but the bulk of his muscle was still clearly visible, lean yet strong where they lay above the top of his jeans.

He’s too nervous to look back at you, so he swipes a hand through his hair instead, rustling the curly strands to calm himself while his sunglasses slide down his nose. He urgently returns to his work, trying with all his might not to spare even a glance in your direction, lest you somehow see the flush on his face isn’t due to sunburn.

Somewhere in between assembling the legs and the roof of the pergola, he thinks he feels eyes trailing over his figure, but he couldn’t be sure.

══════════════════

He tries not to feel guilty about what he’s taken to calling the ‘pool incident’ in the days that follow. He feels silly for it, honestly, and he’d have laughed at himself over how stupid he probably looked if he was entirely sure you hadn’t looked his way.

But alas, he _isn’t_ sure, and that just has more questions piling up in his mind.

He’s back to mulling over that Saturday on the Tuesday that follows, painting a wall in one of the sections under construction while you sit beside him on top of a pile of boxes, swinging your legs back and forth as you go about reading lyrics like always. Technically, you weren’t supposed to be here...but god help anyone who lay a finger on the boss, and anyone who’d had even a shred of self-preservation backed away from you the moment you stepped into the work space with those high heels that were _definitely_ a safety hazard if he’d ever seen one.

_Had you seen him?_

No, surely not. There were all those umbrellas and chairs between you and him; he was probably covered by them, or maybe something else. _Surely if you’d seen him you’d have come over to talk,_ he thinks, _like you always do._

He can hear you droning on in the back, but he can’t focus on what you’re saying. He can hardly focus on his own task either, just mindlessly stroking his brush across the surface of the wall. 

_Surely you’d have said something_ , he reassures himself, not entirely sure whether he wishes you hadn’t seen him just so he could stop thinking about it, or wishes that you _had_ seen him purely to save himself the embarrassment of having done something so idiotic without anything to show for it.

He dips his brush back into the can of paint, but pauses before he can lift it to the wall.

 _Maybe you were too embarrassed to come say hi_ , it occurs to him, and his brows furrow.

_But, if you were embarrassed, that would mean that you--_

“Frankie!”

He blinks stupidly before turning towards you, looking just in time to catch your pursed lips and raised brow, legs having stilled by now.

“Sorry--what?”

You sigh, fixing a fake expression of annoyance on your face as you open your mouth to repeat what you said, “‘Mi mirada estas fija en ti’...am I saying that right?”

The meaning of the words themselves blind him for all of two seconds, before he’s clearing the thought from his head. _Stupid coincidence_. He coughs slightly, fixing a smirk on his lips, just for the sake of pretending like he wasn’t shaken. 

“Mi mirada _ESTÁ_ fija en ti,” he scoffs, shaking his head, “You sound like a kindergartener. _Don’t need help with conjugation,_ my ass.”

He doesn’t spare you a look while you gasp and sputter behind him, indignant at his joking comments.

“ _Excuse me?”_ you begin, and he’s already laughing at the tone of your voice before you can continue, “It was an honest mistake! Estas, está--practically the same thing. Plus, doesn’t it say more about the teacher than the student that I can’t tell the difference between the two?”

He sends you a glare over his paintbrush, firing back with an accusation of his own hardly a second later, “I’m a fantastic fuckin’ teacher, _thank you very much_. It’s not my fault you don’t have the brain power to tell the difference between an ‘s’ and an ‘a.’”

You gasp another time, almost falling off of your box just to slap him on the shoulder, earning a round of mirthful laughs from Frankie, who enjoys the feeling of his smile right up until the moment you go back to comfortable silence.

He continues painting for a few minutes, humming some tune to himself, until it occurs to him you’ve been quiet for a lot longer than you could normally manage around him. He turns to spare a glance at you, only to see you picking uselessly at the peel of an orange, barely being able to scrape the surface with your precarious acrylic nails. The fact that you can’t open it by yourself somehow seems more important than how you’d seemingly pulled it out of nowhere.

He sits still, just waiting, amusement piling up inside of him as he watches you huff and struggle, turning the fruit this way and that, like poking a different spot would somehow give you a better chance of actually opening it. He stares until the sight becomes more sad than amusing and he drops his paintbrush with a chuckle, not even asking before he swipes it from your hands.

Your head shocks up at his intervention, and it’s when you continue to look at his downturned face rather than his busy hands that he feels the air change, noticeably heavier than it was before.

“There,” he opens it on the first try, roughly pulling the skin off it one fell swoop, dusting off as many of the little white bits as he can manage, knowing he’d never go to the trouble for anyone else.

It’s only when he shoves the orange back towards you and raises his head that he realizes what’s wrong. You’re practically nose to nose, sitting at his face-height with the help of the boxes underneath you, staring straight into his eyes with a blank look on your face.

He can feel his blood pause in his veins, the silence of the shrouded hallway clouding his head, and with a distant blip in the back of his mind, he realizes there’s not a single other person in the area besides you or him.

He holds your stare for a second longer, clearing his throat with a step back the earliest his body will allow it. He scratches at the back of his neck as he returns to his paintbrush and can, trying to hide his blush beneath the shade of his ball cap. In his hurry to look as busy as possible, he manages to drip a few drops of paint onto his hands in the process, cursing under his breath as he steadies the brush in his palm and returns to painting the wall.

He swallows stiffly as the silence continues, only the sound of the bristles against the wall is to be heard in the hallway, as the tension his body suddenly adopted rolls off of him in waves.

 _That is_ , until he feels pressure at his lips and he turns to see what it is.

You’ve hopped off your stack of boxes now, hands shiny with orange juice, and hold up a small, cool slice to his lips. Surprised, he turns his gaze to your face, which is still with assuredness, a look that could hardly brook argument held in your upturned eyes.

He holds himself there a second longer, before accepting the offered slice, letting the citrus sting his tongue, like it’d rid his body of the heady feeling currently seizing it.

══════════════════

_There really is very little room for mistakes in life_ , Frankie thinks as he pauses in the middle of the gas station later that night, cradling a box of gum and a bottle of coke in his hands as he makes his way towards the cash register.

It’s really fucking sad but also completely warranted, he thinks, that there is so little wiggle room for accidents or mishaps when you’re living on a tight rope. Lean too far to one side, and you go falling off the edge--even if you didn’t do it on purpose.

The world is not a kind place, and it _will_ take advantage of any gap in discretion just to screw you over. 

And unfortunately, this happens to be his gap of discretion.

He swivels his head quickly to check over his shoulders at the surrounding aisles. It’s late enough at night that he’s the only person in the store aside from the bored cashier, who’s currently hunched over some comic book and seemingly would be for the foreseeable future. He takes the chance he’s given and stalks towards the front windows, where the magazine racks lay.

His heart rate picks up as he locks his eyes on the top display--one magazine in particular catching his eye.

_Hustler._

He knows why it’s gotten his attention, yet he doesn’t want to believe it. Frankie usually wasn’t as much of a sucker for pornographic magazines as his friends were. Benny probably had the biggest collection of _Playboys_ in the goddamned world; he was just too embarrassed to report it to _Guinness_. But _this_...this is testing his resolve.

It’s covered slightly by the edges of the magazines crammed in next to it, but still, it stands in all its explicit glory. The overall background was a soft baby-blue, the water of a pool or beach just barely visible behind the cover of a beach towel or bed sheets perhaps. On top of the sheets, however, is the thing that has his pupils dilating.

It’s a woman on the cover, bikini top shucked off to display her sloping breasts to the open air; her nipples, waist, and shapely legs are bared proudly for the camera, while a tuft of pubic hair peaks just barely from the hem of a criminally small bikini bottom.

But it’s not just that. No, it’s _so much worse_ than that. 

With the heavy cover of darkened sunglasses obscuring her face, _she looks exactly like you._

The smooth skin tone, the curve of her lips, the shape of her nose--all of it, right down to the style of her hair, matches yours to a perfect T, and Frankie feels his stomach drop heavily at the realization.

He can hear something in his mind screaming at him not to give into the feeling that thrums beneath his skin-- _not to put himself in this situation, when he knows only bad things will come from it_ \--yet it’s thoroughly drowned out by the rushing of his blood when he reaches for it, pulling it off the shelf with a small lilt of its glossed pages.

He stares down at the picture of the woman on the cover, trying to come to terms with what he’s about to do. He lifts his head to survey the aisle around him once over, like you would somehow be found standing on the other end, just to catch him red handed, drooling over a half-naked woman that could probably be your doppelganger if she happened to show up in town one day.

But when you aren’t there to yell at him for his poor life choices, and the world chooses not to immediately bring the hell and high waters down on top of him, how much trouble can it _really_ be?

Maybe he’s just making excuses to cross the lines he’d so carefully laid out for himself when this all started, but if it really was _that_ bad of a decision, a time traveler would have come to stop him by now.

So, without a second longer of contemplation, he shoves the magazine under his arms, resuming his idle walk back to the cash register. Only this time, the steady thump of his heart in his chest sounds over the beat of his shoes against the tiled floor.

He throws the magazine, gum, and soda onto the counter when he gets there, forcing the cashier to stand with a groan, lazily returning to his duties. However, it’s only as the steady beep of the scanner rings out throughout the store that he catches sight of something that will really make this entire situation just _that much more_ regrettable when he wakes up tomorrow morning.

“Hey,” he blurts out, receiving a grunt from the cashier in return, “Throw a pack of Lucky Strikes in there, too, would you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT UPDATE: MONDAY, MARCH 15; 2021.
> 
> My Tumblr: [slater-baby](https://slater-baby.tumblr.com)


	6. Chapter 5: El Pragmatista

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _There's no use feeling stupid guilt over stupid things_ , his mother always told him. And as it turns out, Frankie listens to her advice pretty well (at least for a little bit, that is).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SKJKJDAFD OKAY SO EXTRA LONG CHAPTER ONCE AGAIN!! this one is 11k akdfkja didn't mean for it to turn out that way it just kinda did akdjfk oh well~ pls enjoy!!!
> 
> My Tumblr: [slater-baby](https://slater-baby.tumblr.com)

Los Angeles was a double-edged sword. It was all sandy sunshine and beaches, hot days with the usual rose-colored filter that accompanied the air around these parts. But, at the same time, it was maroon-colored summer wind, whipping and winding around your body, invisible against the night sky, yet entirely unforgivable where it crawls up your skin.

Frankie can feel it now, those scathing wisps of heat skimming up his arms and underneath his shirt, chilling his fingers, which dangle out the open window to his side. The stars hang eerie and quiet while they look on in abject apathy, hardly paying mind to his battered truck as it sputters and hums down the highway, too important to waste their time on something so insignificant. He absently bobs his head along to the radio, though he can hardly hear the lyrics between the jumbled mess of his thoughts. By the sound of things, they were apparently incapable of producing a single sentence that would make sense if he opened his mouth right this instant, just detached word after detached word popping into his mind: incomprehensible, buzzing bullshit.

He sighs as he pulls his eyes from the plastic bag that sits in his passenger seat for the nth time tonight. His pupils have been hurriedly running between it and the road for the past ten minutes or so, almost like if he looked at it long enough the shame he’d feel over having spent actual money on it might disappear.

He merely cranks the radio instead, trying not to berate himself too much in his mind (his mother always told him off for that, said it made him too soft in the chest). 

_No vale la pena sentir culpa estúpida sobre cosas estúpidas [No use feeling stupid guilt over stupid things],_ she’d say, to which he’d always shy away, too afraid to admit his own insecurity.

This time, however, he repeats it with hardened conviction, meeting his own eyes in the rearview mirror, “No vale la pena sentir culpa estúpida sobre cosas estúpidas, Francisco.”

The bass booms in his bones, Californian fever lingering in his muscles, sucking up the adrenaline in his veins for all it was worth, creating a hazy mix of ‘you should know better’ and ‘it wouldn’t hurt’ in the pit of his stomach. Worst of all, the craving for a cigarette aches deep in his throat, and he’s not even really a smoker.

He’d thrown his cigs in the trash the very second he’d learned he was becoming a father, too proud to instill that sort of pattern in the little girl who’d eventually become his entire life’s purpose.

But you’ve always been good at bringing back his bad habits, adding gasoline to the fire under his skin that had him itching for a lighter, scrabbling for something to take the edge off. First it was the trailing gazes he couldn’t pull off of you, then it was the late night drinking and brash moves at work, and now he’s spent another dollar he’d never get back on a pack of cigarettes he’d tried to give up four years earlier.

Somehow, he can’t find it in himself to feel bad about it, though.

 _Sure, he’d wake up feeling like someone had shoved a wet paper towel down his throat, but it was all worth it if it could break the blinding delirium that never seemed to leave his body when you were around_ , or so his mind reassured. 

Maybe it was just the pull of arousal in his stomach, or maybe he was just feeling a little more forgivable tonight, but not a single measure of regret comes to mind when he thinks of what he’s going to do when he gets home.

(He can feel the nagging worry in the back of his mind still sounding the alarms, trying to get his attention, but the noise is blacked out by some indistinguishable need; one that’s clouded over every higher function that wasn’t required to keep his body more or less safe and survivable in the moment).

He drives on autopilot, eyes boring holes into every street sign that passes, heartbeat pulsing loud over the radio, even when he can hear the blood rushing in his ears more than any gust of wind that hits the cabin. And he works dreamily like that until he gets back to his apartment, faded like he’d just swallowed some pill that could take away every complicated detail the world usually liked to shove in his face.

He goes through the motions of unlocking his door and shucking his jacket off, taking the time to neatly hang it on the coat rack instead of throwing it over a chair like he usually did. He stalks over towards the couch, plastic bag loosely swinging in his hands--and maybe the whole thing would seem entirely innocent or normal if you’d looked at it from a different angle, just a second of rest after a long day at work.

But Frankie knows it’s not. He knows it’s not because he can feel that look glazing over his eyes, can feel that hum settling in his brain. He doesn’t even need to explain what it feels like; after all, anyone with that kind of drive has the experience themself.

Frankie knows it’s not _innocent_ or _normal_ in the least, because his dick is half hard in his jeans, pining for a cigarette with pictures of some naked girl that looks entirely too much like his boss spread out all over the coffee table in front of him.

If there’s one redeemable thing about this entire situation, though, it’s that the pictures are almost painfully well-shot.

He can see every strand of the model’s hair, loose and shoved over her shoulders, bare ass plumped up with her tight bikini bottoms pulled down just below her cheeks. He can see her acrylic nails catching under the fabric, a little too close to that color you liked to paint yours. 

He could draw comparisons all day long--how her spit-slick lips looked just as plush as he knew yours would be; how her face was equally as flushed as you always got when he made you laugh too hard, though now, it was for an entirely different reason. She was your spitting image, body swallowed by the glamor he’d given you in his mind, with only a few tiny mistakes peeking through every so often.

He flips through the magazine distractedly, unabashedly dragging his eyes over her exposed cunt and tits, lingering on how tiny her anatomy would surely look beneath his broad palms and thick fingers. 

_Fuck, were you like that too?_

Did you shave or did you go natural? And that hairstyle, would it look any different smashed up against blue bed sheets than it did when you were walking around the hotel? Did you pair those signature Ray-bans with black bikini bottoms when he wasn’t around to see it? Would you wear something else? Maybe something more conservative, or maybe something more revealing...

But, more than anything, he wonders if you like to sunbathe naked by the pool, soft breasts and nipples exposed where anyone who walked by might catch a glimpse.

And if you did, _would you let him watch?_

He groans in the back of his throat when the thought comes to his mind as he eagerly reaches for the box of cigarettes off to the side, hurriedly sticking one in between his lips after clumsily tamping the pack. He lights it with shaking hands, tilting his head back towards the ceiling while the ash settles soothingly on his tongue.

Fuck.

Would you let him watch you sunbathe naked by the pool, let him drool over every line of your figure and every inch of skin you usually covered beneath padded suit jackets and tight pencil skirts? 

Would you let him slather sunscreen on your bare back and curve his fingers up around your ribs, smooth under your breasts and test their weight in his hands?

Would you sit with your back to his chest by the poolside, exposed entirely for his curious hands to explore and touch?

He can picture it now: himself, fully clothed. You, fully bare. You’re pulled back against his body, legs spread wide over his knees so his fingers can push into your slick heat over and over again. You’re hiding your face against his neck, panting against his jugular everytime his thumb so much as _grazes_ your swollen little clit.

He’d gotten you right where he wanted you, pinned you against his body, where the strength of your abs was no match against his thick upper arms. 

_God_ , he wants to see you like that. 

He wants to finger fuck you on some lounge chair by some imaginary pool his mind just happened to create, wants to pull his hand back and see how much you’d leaked into his palms during the height of it all, and whether or not you’d blush when he licked it off.

He pulls the cigarette from his mouth with another deep drag, blowing a lungful of smoke towards the ceiling just to breathe it back in as it falls towards the ground. He’s achingly hard inside of his jeans now, cock pushed up uncomfortably against his zipper, twitching now that the nicotine has run its course and all he can think of is you.

He lets the cig hang between his lips while he fiddles with his belt and fly, rucking up his shirt in the process, only to throw it over his head the minute it becomes more of a nuisance than a comfort, just another sweat-slick piece of fabric to cling to his feverish body.

He lets the flaps of his fly frame his groin for a split-second, his boxers bulging and tented in the front, where the evidence of his arousal is hugged snugly by the open zipper and denim of his jeans. The sight of himself like this--shirtless and hard, cigarette smoke wafting over the plains of his muscle--has a wet spot forming under the waistband of his underwear, and he sits transfixed until a wisp of ash burns black where it falls against his jeans pocket.

He runs a hand over his stomach and chest, puffing contendly, even when his cock throbs underneath his boxers, enjoying the feeling of the gaping fly around his clothed shaft. When he plucks the cigarette from his lips once again, he tries to savor the taste of the smoke on tongue, if only to capture some semi-permanent aspect of you in the moment.

You’d probably taste like cigarettes when he kissed you, mild with a hint of spice, just like the Lucky Strikes you hid in your bra when you were supposed to be working, but decided to annoy him instead. 

He inhales with a groan as he slips a hand down the front of his pants, unconsciously bucking his hips up against his palm in a small fit of desperation, a plea for more pressure, yet he doesn’t give in. He merely rubs over his cock softly, gently wrapping his hand around the stiff outline of it, pushing hard against his frenulum when his fingers meet a few patches of precum at the tip.

Smoke burns his nose when he exhales, but the dryness of his throat is nothing compared to the searing burn in his chest--the one that pins you beneath him in his mind, open and waiting for him, if only he’d have the courage to act.

He tugs at his waistband, pulling the cig out of his mouth with two fingers and a mouthful of soot. He watches the ash fall to the carpet, too keyed up to feel any belabored responsibility to go find that old ashtray he’d probably buried in a cabinet somewhere along the line.

His dick slaps against his stomach when he shoves the front of his briefs under his balls, curving long and firm towards his bellybutton, trailing shiny wetness over the small line of hair leading down to the band of his jeans. He traces the vein on the underside with a single finger while he aggressively shoves the cigarette back between his teeth, instinctively spreading his legs a little wider as he settles back against the couch, head tilted up against the cushions to stare at the dark ceiling.

God, he wants to kiss you. 

Every time you light up around him, his fingers itch to pluck the smoke from your mouth and stamp it into the ground, replace your stupid addiction with one of his own and make you suffer all the consequences that follow. He wants to see that scarlet lipstick smeared and ruined against your made up face, all because he couldn’t stand to see you reach into your bra one more time for another singular, sad cigarette.

And, as it naturally follows, the second he wraps his hand around his cock to give himself a proper stroke he finally admits he wants to do _so much more_ than just kiss you.

He wants to pull those flimsy little blouses apart at the buttons, wants to see just how in the world you manage to cram cigs, lipstick, _and_ a travel mirror into those lacy little things he’d always hoped you wore beneath them. He wants to streak that cherry lip color in a completely different way, watch it dye your saliva red while you suck his cock, eyes glossy with unshed tears.

He wants to shove those pencil skirts up over your hips, pull your panties just far enough to the side to thrust into you, give you what you need from him all in the comfort of your penthouse office. He nearly lets the cigarette fall from his lips when he moans on a particularly good tug, rashly running his thumb over his tip, just adding the egregious amount of precum he’s leaking to the slick mess on his shaft and pelvis.

He’s hardly inhaling any longer, just letting the chemicals and smoke hang in a cloud around his head, blobs of ash cascading down his chest with microscopic, burning pinpricks every time he chooses to fuck his own fist instead of save his couch cover the inevitable blaze. 

Heat curls in his abdomen, spiking every time his palm presses into the swollen base of his cock, squeezing just a little harder than necessary, trying to pretend like he wasn’t alone in the shadows of his living room, finding comfort in his own hands rather than another person.

Another stunted drag, another blistering thrust.

More than anything he wants to watch you sunbathe naked by the pool. He wants to be the one who gets to see you topless and melting under the Californian sun, relaxed and comfortable against a plush lounge chair. He envisions himself peeling your swimsuit bottoms from your shapely ass just to find you slick and ready for him, all puffy and pink at your core, the sight practically _begging_ him to do something about it.

His voice breaks on a groan when his back stiffens, hips lifting off the cushion to push into his hand faster than before, getting lost in the imaginary look of you peeking at him over those Ray-bans while he lines himself up, squealing when his hips finally meet your dripping pussy.

“Fuck,” he moans aloud, teeth grit around the cigarette, breathing more smoke than actual air at this point. Losing himself in the viscous, poisonous taste, he feels sweat sticking in his hair, the plains of his chest redder than when he started (though, part of that has to be due to the way he’d all but let the ash blow onto his own skin), “ _Fuck, fuck--_ ”

But the thing that really does it for him is the vision of you in his mind, reaching up toward him from where you lay beneath him, stuffed full and sated by his cock. His mind reels with bated breath when you pull the cigarette from his lips, tucking it between your own instead--staining it with your lipstick--just to blow the smoke back into his face when he leans in to kiss you.

_Now we both taste like Lucky Strikes._

He cums with a deep groan, panting rapidly between ash-filled gasps of cigarette smoke while it splatters against his abs. He strokes himself slow and hard while he rides out the waves, the fantasy slowly washing away like the pleasure that ebbs and flows throughout his body. 

Smoke streams rock back and forth above his head when he leisurely opens his eyes, a saccharine sort of richness filling his nose on his next breath inwards, and he can’t help but imagine how pleasant the scent would be mixed with your Parisian perfume.

He runs his hand up his stomach distantly after a few dazed seconds, coating his own fingers with his release while the cig burns to its filter where it hangs in his mouth. He can feel the chemicals coursing through his veins, can feel the hazy pleasure mix with the endorphins and sugar he’d been high off of earlier, combining just the right way to create a sickeningly sweet adoration in his brain that feels a whole lot like you.

He groggily comes back to, flicking the butt of the smoke out in the toilet when he traverses to the bathroom to get himself cleaned up. It’s only when he returns to the couch for a beer and a few movies that he catches sight of the discarded convenience store bag. He stares longingly for a few seconds before he breaks.

He smokes _two_ cigarettes that night, and he sure as hell can’t blame himself for it.

══════════════════

As it turns out, Frankie’s sort of a hypocrite. That, or he’s just horrible at following his own mother’s advice.

 _No vale la pena sentir culpa estúpida sobre cosas estúpidas [No use feeling stupid guilt over stupid things],_ she’d told him a thousand times over, and here he was, feeling stupid guilt over stupid things. Actually, he’ll give himself a little credit: he didn’t feel guilty until he watched you pull out your pack of Lucky Strikes for a mid-morning smoke one Thursday along the line, and _that_ is when the embarrassment and shame started to creep back up his spine once again.

Because, up until that Thursday, he’d been riding off of the static electricity all but hanging in the air, feeding off of every unsure glance and stolen touch you left him with every time you came around the janitorial floor. But given a week’s time, two glasses of whiskey, and a few unspoken agreements later, it’s like the air had gotten a little less dense. Not that it was any less charged than before--- _no_ , it was still sizzling like a badly exposed cable--it was just coated in something a little more… _syrupy_ than before.

When he thinks about it, though, it sort of makes sense. After all, every electrified wire is coated with a heavy lining of plastic around the outside, just to soften the touch and insulate the truly important, truly reckless insides.

And that’s what it feels like. Between every candied second of time he spends staring down your sugary smile lay veritable pitfalls of crackling energy, little bits and pieces here and there that have him wondering if he misconstrued it all, if he simply rushed into the situation head-on without looking at the speed limit signs lining his path. But then, the second he condemns his own forward thinking comes the crushing weight of _something else_ , something nameless and inconspicuous, yet blaring and completely obvious all at the same time.

He’d be a fool not to see it--t was practically staring him straight in the face, after all--but at the same time, if his wandering mind hadn’t been endlessly looking for it, he probably would have missed it altogether. At this point, now that the space between the two of you is heavy with something neither of you would dare put a name to, it’s probably fair to say that what goes unsaid will always be more important than what goes openly explained.

And the way you’ve made a habit of touching his arms recently is definitely in the former category.

Maybe he’s crazy, or maybe his mind is desperately trying to find some excuse for the way he all but leers at you every time you pass by, but you’ve been touching him a lot more recently. When he’s working on something and you want him to turn towards you to say goodbye, or when he makes you laugh a little too hard and you need something to keep you from falling over. Every innocuous, innocent little interaction always ends with a redhot, burning touch to his shoulder or bicep, fingernails biting into his skin a little firmer than necessary, like the intentions behind it weren’t totally chaste.

The first time you do it, he nearly gasps at the feeling. You usually liked to keep your distance, to duck under the cover of your hair or look away from him when your face was too flushed to fully hold his eyes any longer. But, suddenly, your palm was firm against his arm and you were laughing right next to him, leaning in a little closer than was probably needed--and _Frankie finds himself leaning into it too_ , pushing himself into your hands and your impeccable presence every time you so much as look at him. He’d been in over his head with the little nicknames and avoided questions, but now—now with you actually _reaching for him_ , even when you just want to say hello—he’s barely clinging to the lifesaver he’d hardly managed to catch in the first place.

But then again, that could all mean nothing if you just look at it a different way.

Were you like that with everyone? Did you put your hands on them just because that’s how you worked as a person? Or was it just him?

And that’s always what it comes down to, isn’t it? Did you throw your time at any person who happened to cross your sight, or was it just him? Did you go around sharing your morning snacks with anyone who would try a taste, or was it just him? Did you waste your company time listening to the same Spanish tape over and over again just to learn the lyrics, or was that just for him?

He mulls over it unhealthily at work, even though somewhere in the back of his mind he already has the answer. 

Was it just him?

_(Yes, anyone could tell by now that he was special)._

Or is that just you?

_(In what world would anyone say all those moments were unconnected?)_

He struggles not to realize the fact himself, some chemical in his brain barring him from moving past this weird, back-and-forth dance the two of you had spontaneously made up. Not that he’s not enjoying it, though; he just wishes he could put it one way or the other.

It’s obvious you want something from him; he just doesn’t know exactly what that is. And for as long as he spent picturing your body and beauty in his mind that one night ago, he doesn’t know what he wants from you, even though he knows for a fact he wants _something._

But it’s days like today that have him thinking this whole thing goes up a lot higher than he originally thought.

You’d been putting something off; that, he could tell. The bad days were piling up and the lighter was coming out more often. You were also spending more and more time with him than in the office, so much so that he’d actually had to physically pull you by the crook of your elbow towards the elevator so you wouldn’t be late to a meeting with your advisors one evening. You’d given him shit for it, obviously, but he’d learned how to take advantage of your apparent favor of him: he’d give you shit in kind, and there was absolutely nothing you could do about it.

But, for as much as he thought the funny way your hair puffed up when you ran your fingers through it too many times looked cute, he could tell you were hiding the seriousness of whatever it was you were dealing with behind your pointed jokes and jabs at his expense. Hence why he’s not yapping at you to do your work like he usually is when you come find him this time of day. Instead, he silently sought you out, letting you solemnly trail after him as he walks towards the concrete stairs leading down to the pool deck and jetski bay.

When he sits down on the concrete steps, lunch box in hand, you just lower yourself down as well, picking at a hole in the ankle of your tights while you try with all your might to find a comfortable position for your feet, which are crammed into a pair of high heels like always. He watches you fidget and bob, watches the way your eyes blur with something akin to tiredness, but not entirely just that. You sit in silence as he observes you softly, sighing when he fails to come up with something to say that didn’t sound stupid or insensitive when he tested it in his mind. Instead, he settles for saying nothing, just opening the little tupperware boxes he’d packed earlier that day.

It’s a windy day, the gusts kicking up sand and static with every movement, sending a pleasant little bit of coldness under the tight cuffs of his repair jumpsuit. However, for as much as he feels at home here observing the shoreline, staring at a pack of seagulls while they fight over fish somewhere off the edge of the beach, you look entirely out of place. Your hair is blown harshly from your face, completely exposing that tight look you’d worn the second he agreed to let you sneak out to lunch with him. In tandem, your blouse billows in the wind, skirt flimsy-looking and awkward against the rustic, natural background.

He dips his fork into another bite of steak, chewing on his cheek before turning his gaze back towards the rolling waves and crumbling sand castles. And the two of you sit in silence like that for quite some time, Frankie just enjoying his meal, you enjoying something akin to a moment of silence (though, _enjoy_ is a bit of a strong word.)

He loses himself in his thoughts until he feels that damned, cursed hand against his shoulder, begging for his attention with unforgiving, ruthless modesty.

“What are you eating?” you ask softly—softer than normal—while you peer curiously into his lunchbox, puffy, styled hair blocking his view.

He takes a sip of water from his bottle before setting it back against the stairs; he clears his throat before he continues, “Food.”

You glare at him exhaustedly, but he can see the beginnings of amusement shining in your eyes, “ _I know that_ , dumbass. What kinda food?”

“Mexican food.”

“Frankie--”

“I’m just answering the question--”

“No, you’re being withholding---”

“You wanna know what kinda food this is?” he interrupts with a teasing smirk, wind drying the corners of his eyes while he peeks at you dumbly, “Really?”

“Of course I do, why the hell else would I ask?” you try to keep your voice level, like you were really mad at him, but the irritation has faded to slight playfulness that shows just barely in your eyes.

Fuck it. He’ll bite.

He pushes the food around with his fork, mixing it up in some sort of useless, showy way he hopes has your mouth watering.

“Carne en salsa con arroz y frijoles,” he says easily, meeting your eye with a challenging gaze.

You stare silently back at him for a few seconds before you drop your vision back to the tupperware container. He watches with bated breath as you buffer, waiting for the other shoe to drop--and it eventually does, when you whip your head to turn towards him with a pout.

“I don’t know what a single one of those words mean, Francisco,” you declare with a defeated tone, biting your lips to prepare for the response you know is coming.

He just meets your eye in kind, shoving another forkful of food into his mouth before speaking once again, “It means it’s fucking delicious is what it means.”

He tries to go back to eating his food once that’s through (he only gets thirty-minute lunch breaks, after all), but you’re hardly content with his answer, scooting closer and closer with every second that passes, just to get a better look at the food on his plate.

He laughs silently in his head once you’re pressed almost fully against his side, legitimately pushing his shoulder back just to stare longingly at the rice in the corner of the container. Maybe the feeling of your body sidled up against him would have had him blushing something fierce a week or two ago, but now, the touchiness has merely faded to something like normalcy.

(Not only that, but the sinking feeling in his stomach at how hungry you seem to be keeps his brain from profiting off of the free physical contact. You’ve been messed up lately, probably working overtime just because you spent some stupid thirty minutes looking at the beach with him when there were a thousand other things you should have been doing.)

“You want some?” he offers, instantly sobering with overflowing genuinity while you lean against him sungly.

You ponder for a second or two, still squirming against the uncomfortable height of your heels on the steps, before eventually looking his way.

“You sure you wouldn’t mind?”

He scoffs, “I wouldn’t have offered if I minded.”

Your lips close with something close to a smile when he drops his fork, leaving your hand to pick it up and fiddle with the meat and rice instead. He watches you gather a brimming bite before shoving it in your mouth, nagging worry covering any sort of stupid giddiness he might have felt over the indirect kiss.

You hum as you chew, eyes widening with sudden energy as you eagerly turn back to the tupperware. He chuckles while you continue to shovel food into your mouth, barely paying attention to the light look on his face when the mouthwatering combination is there for the taking instead.

“Damn, Frankie, this is good,” you mumble between bites, thigh touching his while you lean in for another.

“Told you so,” he posits as you more or less eat out of his palms. And he lets you finish the rest of his lunch while he takes tiny sips of his water, silence filling out between the two of you once again. Out of the corner of his eyes, though, he can still see the unnatural bend of your ankles in those heels, can hear the minute scuffing sounds they make against the pavement when you try to readjust your legs unconsciously.

He furrows his brows at the sight for a few seconds before he’s knocking his knee sideways, shoving his leg underneath yours to quite literally kick the damn shoe off your foot. You look shocked, fork halfway to your lips as you watch the heel topple down the stairs and onto the sandy beach below.

“C’mon,” he starts before he kicks the other one off, too, not worrying for a second you’d get mad at him, “You’re gonna give me arthritis if you force me to watch you sit like that even a second longer.”

He watches your tights-covered toes uncurl easily, lightly settling on the pavement, like he’d stunned you with the flashy and quite stupid gesture. You don’t say anything for the rest of the time you spend with him that day, just serenely leeching off the warmth and homeliness of his body, savoring the taste of his cooking with shoeless feet that gently test the feeling of the pavement beneath their covered pads.

And he lets you. He lets you eat his food and push against his body, even though the top few buttons of your shirt don’t cover your chest quite as well as you think they do, and he catches the sight of a creamy bra strap underneath your collar. He even shoves his water bottle into your hands before you can utter a single word, simply sucking on the mouth, completely oblivious to the stupid warmth that simmers in his muscles at the sight.

That day, the two of you walk back to the hotel standing a little closer than normal. Him, trying not to feel guilty for being the way he is. You, carrying your heels rather than wearing them.

══════════════════

And from then on, it’s like he’s looking at two sides of the same coin: one side, where the honeyed moments weigh heavy on his mind, and the other side, where stupid, scandalous things draw his eyes easier than the high tone of your voice or the gentle touch of your fingers.

You’re a study in juxtapositions. For as well-versed and entertaining as you were, your skirts were equally as tight, which--at the risk of sounding like an asshole--Frankie can’t help but be distracted by. It’s your scarlet lipstick and intimidating high heels, but your smaller hands and thinner shoulders all at once.

He’s halfway caught in that second-world, where he’s entirely sure you want him just as much as he wants you, but entirely devoted to those days where you lean against his body and share his lunch when you’re supposed to be working instead.

It’s insane and lightning-fast, the way you change between the two of them, like they were merely switches you could turn on and off at will. Though, that might be stretching it, because, for all intents and purposes, you seem entirely oblivious to the way you make his throat go dry with how you dress or act around him.

One second you’ll be rambling on about something inconsequential, doing those endearing little hand-motions you thought added spice to any story you told him, and the next you were leaning forward to tease him further about something equally as unimportant, your shirt stretching at the breasts, those buttons drawing thick indentations over your chest.

He tries not to stare--really, he does. It’s like every bad, masculine pitfall in those cheap love stories you buy at the corner store, the kind that make the male lead sound more like a creep than an admirer. Frankie tries not to look at you like that--tries not to be the cliché he knows he’s barely above--but it’s just so easy to let his eyes drop to your chest or your ass, to let himself sneak a glance when he’s sure you’re not paying attention, just because it satisfies some innate, unstoppable need in his brain that just begs him to absorb your beauty every second of the day.

He’s disgusted with himself. And, even more so, that stupid guilt comes back, and he throws that magazine in the trash the second he gets home after a particularly rough day faced with you in V-cut blazer, but nothing underneath it. He begs his thoughts not to dip into the gutter, not to derail themselves, even when you pull one over on him and he’s blindsided for a few seconds.

Even when you swipe his hat off his head in the courtyard one day (he was installing some new utilities, and of course, not even the rain-soggy lawn could stop your stilettos from hiking their way over to him), he manages to keep it together….for all of about 5 seconds, that is, until you shoved the thing over your own head, looking all kinds of silly and cute with that dirty Standard Oil cap mashed over your primped hair.

He pleads with himself not to find it hot-- _it’s a fucking hat for god’s sake_ \--but at the end of the day, his brain isn’t the one that gets to decide whether or not something gets him going, and that day he learned a lot about himself he hardly knew before (namely that he could actually get hard over the thought of you wearing his signature, ugly baseball cap. Yeah, he’s really not too proud of that one, but it happened, and there’s really no point in trying to deny it at this point).

He’s a pervert. That, and a sadist. 

After all, why would he continue to let himself live like this when all it did was create distractions? He’s a muddled mess at work, back to tripping over his own two feet just to please you once again, like you hadn’t fed him oranges out of your hand or bought him an entirely new ladder once upon a time ago.

It’s stupid and heartaching and idiotic and everything he’s _living for_ , but everything he’s _dying because of_ all at the same time.

It’s ,em>exhausting, going back and forth between the two precipices, climbing each mountain, yet refusing to glance over either edge. And for as bad as he feels about peeking down your shirts or jerking off to you in secret, he’d already used up his one “Get Out Of Jail Free Card” when it came to avoiding you, so he’s reverting back to the original modicum of problem solving: talking to his best friends about it...which is probably a mistake seeing as they’re backhanded bastards who love to watch him make a mess of himself, but can also be genuinely useful at times since they’ve got a fierce protective instinct that’ll keep him out of trouble when the worst of it hit.

However, Frankie’s not taking any chances on this one, hence why he’s limiting his pseudo-therapy group to just two people: himself and Santiago (because, lets face it, Benny would just shove a few porn mags in his face and tell him to get over it, which would then prompt Will to get into some stupid argument with his baby brother, which would ultimately lead to a bunch of half-drunk, irritated idiots taking up wasted space in the dive bar with nothing to show for it).

At least with Santiago he knows he’ll get the reality. Pope was brutally honest and a pragmatist at heart: he wasn’t a fan of wasting time, nor was he big on mushy gestures that didn’t work towards an end (which Frankie usually got caught up with in things like this). The only issue with Santiago was how much of an asshole he could be when he got into it, and any conversation that even broached the subject of the opposite gender just _begged_ him to throw whatever unsolicited opinions he might have out on the table along with his folded cards.

But, if there’s one thing that he’s great at, it’s ripping Frankie to pieces. He won’t spare any expense when it comes to breaking those stupid spells he gets into when things are going suspiciously well, which is the ultimate test of whether or not what was going on at The Chapman was anything more than an overly friendly coworker (even though you’d already nodded your head in his direction; you just hadn’t said the words themselves).

But, the minute he slides into the bar across from his friend, the previous confidence he had melts away quicker than ice cream in a house fire. Dreadful anxiousness crawls up his spine with every sip of beer he takes, sitting heavy and hard in the corner of his mind, even while he listens to Santiago drone joyfully on about some stupid incident at the club he worked at a few days ago (when their service ended, Santiago invested himself in private security and surveillance, eventually landing a gig at a club downtown that was just a few minutes away from the hotel, making it an awfully convenient place to catch drinks after long days).

“--in the end though, I walked that bastard out in cuffs. I don’t fuck around with shit like that. Even if the guy was a half-decent person in the end, no ones getting away with concealed-carrying in _my_ nightclub,” he takes a drink in between his sentences, staring down a group of girls dancing off to the side of the platform they were sitting on, “That’s just not how it works, y’know?”

“Yeah,” he offers noncommittally, half-paying attention, half-worrying the inside of his cheek as he glances around the bar, not even focusing his vision to take in the bouncing, colorful scenery any longer.

“Oh,” Santiago suddenly jumps, resituating himself in his seat, “that reminds me. I got a gig coming up for some white-collar banquet on the 7th, if you want in. It’s just a luncheon, so you know it’s not gonna be too hard to handle, more of a wine-tasting thing than an open bar, if you get what I’m saying? I need someone to cover for one of my guys who’s gonna be out next month. His wife’s pregnant right now and he doesn’t wanna take any jobs that’ll have him out of the office too long in case something happens.”

Frankie fidgets with the napkin in his hands, tearing off little pieces and balling them up in his fingers while Santiago continues on, always the chatter-box.

“So,” he claps his hands with a smile, leaning across the table with that look in his eyes Frankie usually wouldn’t think twice about accepting, “What do you say? Are you in?”

He grinds his jaw, throwing another napkin-ball onto the table, pausing for just a second too-long before saying, “I don’t know, man.”

Santiago’s apparently stunned by his answer, pausing a beat longer before he scoffs with a disbelieving smile, “You _don’t know_? Frankie, you’ve gone on all my other one-time stints. You’re the man for this job, c’mon.”

“It’s not that, Santi, I just--”

“I know you wanna get out of the hotel, Fish,” he interrupts pointedly, a little more serious now, “You get stuck changing light bulbs and shit all the time--I know you gotta be bored outta your mind there, right?”

Frankie nods his head reluctantly, refusing to meet his best friend’s gaze while he reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket for a pack of cigarettes. He shoves one in between his lips while Frankie patiently waits for him to finish his thought, turning his head to exhale while a waitress absently drops an ashtray onto their table when she walks by. Frankie thanks her quietly, crossing his arms in front of himself, almost as if to brace himself against the words Santi’s about to spew.

_Here we go…_

“Plus,” Santiago starts between drags, “I pay you better anyway. I’ll give you 15 bucks an hour, just to watch some suits talk outta their asses and to walk around with a pistol on your hip like you’d actually use it if someone got too rough,” he pulls the cig from his mouth, tapping it against the ashtray, “It’s pretty much just a show-thing at this point. It’ll beat whatever they got you doing at the hotel that Friday, swear it on my life. I’ll even buy you drinks afterwards, if that’s what it takes.”

“Santiago,” he sighs as he lifts his drink, “Ya tengo--” _[I already have--]_

“ _No, no_ , listen to me, Fish,” he cuts him off, and Frankie resists a mirthful laugh when Santiago’s browline straightens and he puts on that weirdly professional face he only ever used at business meetings or when giving his friends a hard time, “It’s a good opportunity, right? 11 to 4, a good five hour thing plus whatever time we spend doing clean-up and set-up. That’s almost a hundred dollars, in one day. You’ve never had trouble getting out for a day before, anyway. Doesn't that _Mrs. Vasquez_ or whatever have a soft spot for you?”

“It’s _Velásquez_ ,” he corrects gruffly, “And, _yes_ , she does, but that’s not--”

He groans again, not even finishing his thought as Santiago makes some exasperated, flailing gesture with his hands, swallowing his mouthful of beer before eagerly continuing, “Exactly! So what makes this time any different? Don’t tell me you suddenly _like_ fixing pipes at 10 in the morning.”

“No, Santiago, it’s just--” he pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing again, “I’ve got stuff to do for work; I’m not pulling out for a gig.”

He shakes his head ruefully, laughing softly under his breath, and Frankie _just knows_ whatever comes out of his mouth next is gonna be a mistake, “Only thing that’d keep anyone chained to that fucking hotel is a pretty girl in a short skirt, so unless it’s that, I’m not taking no for an answer.”

Frankie nearly opens his mouth to answer, but the minute his lips part, his receding confidence pauses in its retreat, sticking to the roof of his mouth, stopping his tongue from forming a single syllable. He doesn’t know what comes over him, but he doesn’t make to refute Santiago’s point. He just grinds his jaw, begging Pope to get what he means without him having to actually say it.

When he just silently fidgets in his seat, however, Santiago’s eyes suddenly go a little wide. He nearly spills his pint trying to lower it to the table while he straightens in the booth, but Frankie refuses to meet his eye.

“You’re kidding me,” he interjects disbelievingly.

“Santiago,” Frankie begins calmly, uselessly trying to defuse the ticking time bomb sitting across from him before it blows.

“There’s a girl,” he interrupts, a wicked smile on his face.

“ _Santiago--_ ”

“There’s a fucking girl!” he laughs loudly, drawing several burning stares from around the bar, and Frankie wants to smash his head in on the table in front of him. Before he can cause any bodily harm to himself, though, Santiago reaches across the booth, slapping him hard on the shoulder, pride stinging on the red skin he leaves behind.

“ _Fish_ ,” he starts, having all but forgotten their little argument, “That’s great! What’s she like? Is she a co-worker or something? You never told me there was a girl on the repair staff.”

He stutters for a moment, scratching behind his neck while he tries to think up a story convincing enough to skim past your astronomical yearly income, “Uh--Yeah, something like that. She’s new, so you probably wouldn’t have heard about her yet.”

Santiago nods his head like he’s convinced, but Frankie just sweats nervously where he sits. 

_Coworkers or something like that._

_A new girl on the staff he probably wouldn’t have heard anything about._

It’s not _technically_ a lie, just not the whole truth either. Forgetting the fact that you were the sole owner and operator of one of LAs most expensive luxury hotels and he was just a repairman making four bucks an hour, it all made perfect sense. Because you _were_ new and you _were_ his coworker….in whatever capacity a millionaire businesswoman could be.

“So, what, you got stuck training her or something?” Santiago eggs him on, enthusiastically connecting all sorts of incorrect dots while Frankie stalls, “Oh, _please tell me she’s a shit repairwoman_ , that way you gotta get up real close to her to help with tools and stuff.”

“No, no, she’s…” he trails off curtly. Maybe from Pope’s perspective it looked like he was trying to find a good way to explain it, when in reality he was trying to find a good way to lie through the skin of his teeth.

He clears his throat, “No, she’s amazing at her job,” he reassures, looking anywhere but at his friend, “That’s what made me notice her in the first place. She’s just so… _good_.”

It might sound like a bit of a cop-out, but he can tell from the way Santiago looks at him that he understands what he means. Maybe it was a bad way of putting it, but it was the plain truth. 

You were just so good.

Not only with the way you got the hotel running like a well oiled machine, but in the way you strayed from the penthouse office every single day, striking up conversations with anyone who had the spare time. You didn’t cut corners and you definitely didn’t go off of misguided preconceptions or some pompous sense of self-importance. You were genuinely a good boss, but above all else, a good person.

Maybe you were the only millionaire in the world who treated their workers like actual human beings. The single millionaire in the country who’d pay thirty bucks to buy some no name repairman a new ladder when his own broke. The lone millionaire on the planet who’d pour Francisco Morales a free drink and remember his daughter’s name.

Maybe you were the only millionaire in the world who was actually _good,_ and for that, Frankie will never forsake you.

“Ahhh,” he nods once again rapidly, swallowing a gulp of beer before he continues, “Competence kink, then. I like that.”

Frankie nearly spits his mouthful on the floor the minute the words leave Santiago’s mouth. He wipes his face dazedly as he tries to come up with a response, feeling all the blood in his body rush to his cheeks in the process.

He can’t even open his mouth before Santiago’s going on.

Jesus Christ, the torture never ends.

“So, have you fucked her or what?” 

His friend even has the nerve to lean his chin on his hand and take a casual sip like he just didn’t say what he just said. Meanwhile, Frankie’s brain is surely _imploding_ somewhere deep in his skull, the physical representation of a dial-tone echoing throughout his stupidly empty mind. 

He can’t manage anything but a weak rebuff, “ _No_ , of course--”

“But you want to, though, right?” Santiago raises savagely, pointing at Frankie with his burning cigarette. 

Frankie’s back to the silent-game again, regretting every single decision that led up to his point in his life. _That_ , and the day he met Santiago Garcia and somehow came to the conclusion he was redeemable company.

_Hijo de puta. [Motherfucker]_

Pope just scoffs with a grin.

“Frankie, I served two tours with you in Vietnam. I held your fucking hand that day you got bit by a krait and were screaming through the antivenom,” he chuckles a little under his breath, taking another drink, “You’ve nearly seen me die, and I’ve nearly seen you die. You’d think I’d be able to tell when you wanna get your dick wet.”

Scandalized, Frankie’s left wordless. After all, he’s not wrong. Frankie does want to fuck you-- _hell_ , he wants to do _a lot of things_ to you. He wants to kiss you breathless, but he also wants to fuck you hard enough to forget his own name. And for as much as he wants to get beneath your skirt, he also wants to share his lunch with you and carry your heels when it hurts your feet to wear them any longer.

He wants to chain smoke cigarettes while dancing to salsa music, pausing every now and then for every odd sip of mimosa or whiskey.

He wants you, but in more ways than one. 

He takes a defiant sip of his drink, refusing to dignify that statement with an answer just yet. Santiago, ever the practical person, hardly accepts the little fit for what it is. He knows Frankie better than that, and wouldn’t give him an ounce of disrespect he didn’t deserve.

It’s an intricate situation, and Pope’s smart enough not to disregard the fact.

“But it’s more complicated than that, isn’t it?” he relents with a blow of smoke, relaxing against the booth with some sort of belabored sobriety he’d only afford Frankie when he was really feeling bad or when Frankie really deserved the sympathy.

He nods, running a palm over his beard while he stares down the stains on the wooden table.

Santiago smiles softly, taking another drag, letting it linger in his lungs, before he goes waving it around again.

“Lemme guess, you got the warm-and-mushy for her but she doesn’t have the warm-and-mushy for you?” he pinpoints with pursed lips, eyes squinting against the rising smoke.

“That’s one way you could put it,” he concedes with a terse voice, warning Santiago not to step on any landmines he wouldn’t be happy to lose a leg over.

Another nod, another exhale. Quietness ensues.

“And how’d you come to that conclusion?”

Truthfully, Frankie doesn’t know how to respond to that. Like Santiago said, it’s more complicated than you’d think. Do you wanna hold his hands and breath the same air, or do you wanna take him hard and fast, want to waste one night of energy on a person who was more or less good enough?

Feelings are tricky, and they’re even more tricky when you’re looking at them through the peephole of a closed door, able to tell that there’s someone on the other side, but unable to tell if you’re looking at them, or they’re looking at you.

What if it’s both? What if he sees you for you, and you see him for him? What then? Is it a stalemate, or is it an agreement?

Some might say the answer was obvious enough, but for Frankie, who has thrived in the grey area and lived in the background a little too long, it’s hard to believe the spotlight would shift onto him all of a sudden.

“I don’t know,” he eventually settles with a shrug, “She likes to touch my arms and stuff--I don’t know if that counts for anything. But she also fed me an orange a while ago? Like, actually used her fingers to bring it to my lips.”

Santiago remains silent, and Frankie can’t help his desperate rambling.

“We got into it a while ago, too, over some stupid misunderstanding. She bought me a drink afterwards, told me she ‘sees me for me’ or something like that,” he takes a thoughtful sip, “You got any idea what that means?”

He watches Santiago take another drag before he stubs out his cigarette, washing down the ashy taste with a few swigs from his glass. Frankie looks on in abject seriousness, knowing that whatever comes next will make or break his mood for the rest of the day.

After all, Santiago Garcia had a very low threshold for bullshit, and lord knows he wouldn’t waste the time dishing out his own. He had a silver tongue and a brutal sense of honesty for anyone he gave a shit about; a very dangerous, but very necessary combination. 

Santiago clears his throat and leans forward, bracing his elbows on the table before he looks Frankie straight in the eye, “You want me to be honest?”

“As honest as you think you should be,” Frankie bites out, heartbeat skipping at the other’s words. He steels himself, looking down at the table rather than up at his friend. You didn’t get a warning like that if something good was coming after. It’s time to lay his cards on the table, but for some reason, Frankie’s still holding them tight.

Was it all just random, meaningless bullshit? Was that just how you were?

Was that all it was?

_Is this it?_

The questions just keep piling up, and for a problem with an obvious, clear-cut answer, life is neither simple nor kind, and Frankie Morales was often the butt of it’s joke.

Santiago sighs, giving a terse nod before he finally opens his mouth. 

“I have no fucking clue what any of that means.”

Frankie’s heart drops at his words, and instantly his blood starts flowing. Where he was frozen before, he’s animated now, swinging his head up so fast his hat nearly falls off with the movement. He looks at Santiago’s straight face like it had personally offended his entire bloodline, and he’s arguing before he can stop himself.

“What the hell do you mean you’ve got no fucking clue?” he spits, feeling the adrenaline drain from his body where it’d been rising seconds before.

“It means exactly what it means: how and why would I have any idea?” Pope answers, actually laughing at the look on Frankie’s face when he leans back to take a drink. Asshole. (Stupid, lovable, teasing _asshole_ ).

“Look,” he begins, almost appeasingly, like Frankie would swing on him if he said the wrong thing, “If anyone is gonna know what she meant by that, it’s _you_. _I’m_ not the one force feeding you orange slices and implanting cryptic messages in your mind.”

He scoffs, screwing his face up, “She wasn’t _force-feeding_ me fucking orange slices, you prick. I came to you--”

“If you wanna know so bad,” Santiago interrupts loudly, throwing a lime slice at Frankie’s chest when he exasperatedly slumps in his chair, “Why don’t you just ask her? Sounds like she wants to suck your dick to me, but I can’t give you much more than that.”

Once again, like a teenager, Frankie instantly goes red in the face, throwing fighting words off his tongue before Santiago had the chance to embarrass him with another word.

The man just laughs, loud and obnoxious, across from Frankie, smiling at how wound up he was getting over a stupid crush. Frankie splutters to a stop eventually, just draining the rest of his glass with a scowl on his face. 

They sit in silence for a few minutes longer, humiliation and amusement hanging heavy in the air. The bubble only breaks when the waitress comes by to bring them their check and Santiago swipes it up before Frankie can even reach for his wallet.

When Frankie tries to fight with him over it, he just fixes him with a stare. 

“I’m paying this time, Fish. Consider it compensation for me being an asshole,” he justifies, and Frankie really can’t disagree with that one (after all, it was entirely true).

However, when the two of them stand and shuck their jackets back on, Frankie doesn’t get to take his little pity-party on the road. Instead, he feels a hand clap hard on his back, fingers biting into his shoulders with that firm reassurement Pope always reminded him of, even when he was being an asshole.

“Don’t sweat it, Fish. You’re a great guy. You know that, I know that,” he looks Frankie in the eyes then, “And by the sound of things, she knows it, too. You’re a catch and half, and anyone who doesn’t realize that is either dumber than a box of rocks, or is six feet under, you got that?”

He nods somberly, smiling softly at Santiago, who stands slightly shorter than him now that they’re back on their own feet. 

“Good,” he mutters before he pulls Frankie in for a hug, slapping him on the back a few more times for good measure, like if he hit Frankie hard enough, the love he has for him might show up in bruises. 

“Te quiero, hermano,” he whispers when he pulls back, and Frankie repeats it without thinking twice.

“Now that that’s done,” Santiago exhales once they separate, looking around the bar and the adjacent dance floor, “Let’s get off the platform, ‘cause I saw a few girls down by the speakers and there’s no way in hell I’m leaving before I get at least one of their numbers.”

Frankie has half a mind to dish out the same routine Santiago just gave him, but he just scoffs instead, managing another splitting grin while he disbelievingly shakes his head.

Santiago might be an asshole, but he’d never be a hypocrite. Lord knows he listens to his own advice a little too well, though, and for as much as it was rakish and idotic, it was hilarious in equal measure.

Frankie just walks after him with his hands in his pockets, anxiety entirely absent from his body now that it’s all said and done.

 _Just ask her yourself,_ some voice in his head repeats, and for being the straight-forward, pragmatic way out, it certainly sounded a lot less tiring than whatever he was doing at the moment.

══════════════════

But of course, it’s a little more complicated than that.

To repeat Santiago’s oh-so-eloquent words: _Sounds like she wants to suck your dick, but I can’t give you much more than that._

And as it usually went, you were more than content to leave him wondering, to give him little peeks and snippets here and there--give him exactly what he wants, but at the same time, leave him without everything he needs.

While Santiago was certainly a genius and all the signs pointed towards the inevitable drop-off, what if he was putting his eggs in the completely wrong basket?

Sure, Santiago was smart (he did run one of LAs most trusted security details, after all), but that time Frankie watched him completely ruin an MRE without even opening the package begs to differ. And if that’s the case, does anything he says really mean _anything?_

Yeah, you were touching him on the shoulders a lot, but it’s a bit of a stretch to say that’s the precursor for public blow jobs, like Santiago said.

Either way, it’s a bit of a mess. At this point, the story is so convoluted and stupid, with so many rambling bits and paragraphs of meaningless dialogue that any one of those outcomes could be entirely true, and it’d make sense without a fraction of a doubt. 

Nevertheless, though, even if Pope had an uncanny ability to botch any vaguely food-like item he laid his hands on, he was still gearing up to ask you what you meant (operative words here being _gearing up to_ ).

He’d battled with his own insecurities for long enough; the only hurdle standing in his path now was the fear that crawled up his spine every time he tried to practice the words themselves in the mirror.

However, it seems that’s not entirely the case, since another small problem has come to light: you’re somehow nowhere to be found now.

The past few days, you’ve hardly been hanging around his workspaces like usual, just rushing past him with a brusque hello and a fast paced walk whenever you _did_ manage to stop by. He’d barely manage to send you a wave before you were moving on, arms full of papers, or folders, or whatever it was you needed for that day’s schedule. It looked like peak bureaucracy to him, but of course, he’d really have no way of actually understanding any of it.

However, the past few days you might have been sparse, but now you were seemingly nonexistent. He’d been meeting you for lunch every once in a while since that day on the steps all that time ago (mostly because he was worried you weren’t eating like you should, but also because your compliments to his cooking always puffed up his ego a little), and he hadn’t been able to find you today. He’d even packed a few store-bought cookies and sodas on the side today, since he knew you were weak for things like that. He’d been rambling on about soda de manzana for a couple weeks now. It was his favorite soda growing up and his mother bought him a few cases when he got back from his enlistment to celebrate his promotion. Needless to say, it held a special spot in his heart after that, and the fact that you’d never had it before personally offended him.

It’s nice to know it’s not because you’re avoiding him, though. He’d overhead a few suits on the conference floor mention the end of the third quarter was coming up. He doesn’t know what the hell that entails, but the ‘end’ of anything in the business world hardly brought anything good with it. 

That being said, he doesn’t think too much of it when 1 PM hits and you still haven’t come down to the janitorial floor to bug him about stupid shit or steal half of his ham torta. He sits by the beach and eats it himself, but saves your can of soda and packet of Oreos in his locker, just in case he can track you down before the end of the work day.

He gets back to work not a minute later, toolbox hanging by his side as he heads up to the forty-fifth floor to fix some air conditioner that was on the fritz. He whistles as he swings the lanyard his set of passkeys are on, the clack of his work shoes echoing throughout the empty hallway. He stares down at his wrist, where he’d scrabbled the room number he’d been looking for in Sharpie. It was probably bad practice, but god was it helpful when he wasn’t entirely focused on the moment at hand.

_4510._

He looks up the minute he can see the door off in the distance and he picks up his pace. He continues to whistle as he makes his way up to it, rapping his knuckles on the breast of it the second it’s within reach.

“Janitorial and repair services,” he calls out monotonously before he shoves the key in the lock, just in case someone was inside when he walks in, though it definitely wasn’t usual, seeing as they’d rather have him work on something without guests to see him there.

The first thing that greets him when he opens the door is a gust of heated air, stale and dead where it blows against him. However, the next thing that meets his eye is even more harrowing. 

A full conference table.

 _A full fucking conference table_ , with every seat occupied, scattered papers, and all the ire that usually came with things of this nature just staring him in the eye. There must have been somewhere between twelve or thirteen people around the table, and their heads all turn at his intrusion, matching looks of bored hatred all stuck to his skin like spitballs the instant he can focus on anything more than the sheer density of the air.

He swallows gruffly before attempting to open his mouth, frozen with anxiousness now that he has the undivided attention of a dozen tired, end-of-the-quarter business men, sweating like pigs in their italian suits. All their faces are red and straight-set, which could either be because of the broken ACU or because of the mountains of paperwork they seem to be mulling over.

However, what happens to be his saving grace comes in the form of you at the head of the conference table, the only women in the crowd of impatient, grumpy men. You look tired beyond belief, blazer shucked off and skin sweat-slicked when your gaze shifts upwards, your drooping frown lifting slightly when you meet his eyes.

 _Oh, so THIS is why you’ve been gone recently_.

“Francisco,” you call out to him, demeanour shifting now that he’s shown up, smiling sweetly up at him, even under all the heat and anger he’s sure you’re facing, “You here to fix something?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT UPDATE: MONDAY, MARCH 22; 2021.
> 
> My Tumblr: [slater-baby](https://slater-baby.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> I hope to see you soon for the next chapter!! This will be updated regularly and pretty soon actually~~ as per usual, if you want a short fic or headcanons, make sure to drop a comment down below and I'll whip it up!!
> 
> NEXT UPDATE: MONDAY, FEB 15.
> 
> My Tumblr: [slater-baby](https://slater-baby.tumblr.com)


End file.
